Renewable Energy Systems

Project 1

Denizli – Kızıldere Geothermal Power Plant

And
Its Performance Improvement

Taygun Recep Güngör

Erkut Kılıç
Erdinç Özkıran
Utku Uzun
 The centre of the Earth is around 6000 degrees Celsius - easily hot enough to melt
rock. Even a few kilometres down, the temperature can be over 250 degrees Celsius if the
Earth's crust is thin. In general, the temperature rises one degree Celsius for every 30 - 50
metres if it is gone down, but this does vary depending on location. In volcanic areas, molten
rock can be very close to the surface. Geothermal energy has been used for thousands of years
in some countries for cooking and heating. The name "geothermal" comes from two Greek
words: "geo" means "Earth" and "thermal" means "heat".

The working principle of geotthermal sources that hot rocks underground heat water to
produce steam. It is drilled holes down to the hot region, steam comes up, is purified and used
to drive turbines, which drive electric generators. There may be natural "groundwater" in the
hot rocks anyway, or it may needed to drill more holes and pump water down to them. The
first geothermal power station was built at Landrello, in Italy, and the second was at Wairekei
in New Zealand. Others are in Iceland, Japan, the Philippines and the United States. In
Iceland, geothermal heat is used to heat houses as well as for generating electricity. If the
rocks are not hot enough to produce steam we can sometimes still use the energy - the Civic
Centre in Southampton, England, is partly heated this way as part of a district heating scheme
with thousands of customers. Geothermal energy is an important resource in volcanically
active places such as Iceland and New Zealand. How useful it is depends on how hot the
water gets. This depends on how hot the rocks were to start with, and how much water it is
pumped down to them. Water is pumped down an "injection well", filters through the cracks
in the rocks in the hot region, and comes back up the "recovery well" under pressure. It
"flashes" into steam when it reaches the surface. The steam may be used to drive a
turbogenerator, or passed through a heat exchanger to heat water to warm houses. A town in
Iceland is heated this way.The steam must be purified before it is used to drive a turbine, or
the turbine blades will get hotter.

Used as an energy source of geothermal energy resources in the world today, Turkey
leads active role with the aim of both electricity and thermal energy conversion is used in a
wide range. Kızıldere Geothermal Power Plant is one the substantial power plants that are
used the produce electricity and thermal energy conversion. Kızıldere Geothermal field is
located at the western extreme of Büyük Menderes Graben, between Denizli and Aydın
provinces. Geothermal fluid of Kızıldere field is utilized to produce electricity, dry ice
production, greenhouse heating and space heating. Although the geothermal power plant of
Kızıldere field has an installed capacity of 20.4 MWe, it produced 10 MWe on average since
1984. General Directorate of Electrical Power Resources Survey and Development
Administration (EIE) started a research project aiming to increase the electricity production
from Kızıldere Geothermal Field. The project is jointly carried by Middle East Technical
University (METU) and EIE. In the scope of project; reports, papers, articles and other
documents published by several institutions were collected. Heat energy reserve and
producible fluid content of the field were determined stochastically after interpretation of
geological, geophysical, geochemical, drilling, production tests and electricity production
data.

The geofluid is in the liquid phase downhole. Its total flow rate and temperature are
264 kg/sand 200 _C, respectively. The geofluid reaches the wellhead in two phase conditions
(liquidsteam). There is not enough steam to produce electricity in the two phase flow, so it
must be flashed. Flashing is a pressure drop process at constant enthalpy. The purpose of the
flashing process is to supply more steam to the turbine even though at a lower enthalpy. After
the flashing process, the quality of the steam (x) is 0.108, and the steam is separated from the
brine in the separator. After separation, saturated steam at 148 _C and 28.5 kg/s is obtained.
The steam is passed through a demister, and then, it is sent to a steam turbine–generator group
to produce electricity. On the other hand, the liquid leaving the separator is directly
discharged to the B.Menderes River. This process causes important environmental problems.
The steam that exits from the turbine enters a mixing type condenser. The temperature and
pressure of the steam at the outlet of the steam turbine are 48 _C and 10 kPa, respectively.
The condenser cooling water is geofluid, which is cooled through a cooling tower. The flow
rate of cooling water is 2378 kg/s. The cooling tower is of the wet type with four fans to
supply the cooling effect. Noncondensable gases (mainly CO2) in the condenser are extracted
by two gas compressors, then the CO2 is sent to a dry ice production plant, property of
Karbogaz Co., which produces 120,000 tonnes of dry ice a year . The layout of the Denizli-
Kızıldere geothermal power plant is shown in Figure below.
Simplified scheme of Denizli-Kızıldere geothermal power plant
The first law of efficiencies is calculated 4% and effectiviness is calculated 13%, the
mathematical calculations are in the last page of the report. These values belong to the
Denizli-Kızıldere geothermal plant.

The liquid that separated from the flash separator (10) is energy source which could be used
and also it has dangerous effects on environment. That liquid is could be used for heating
residences. If that heating power would be used with the maximum efficiency (the carnot
cycle), approximately 6000 residences could be heated by this waste liquid. So that the waste
liquid would be used for heating the residences near Denizli-Kızıldere and not be dangerous
for environment, especially Büyük Menderes River. In addition waste liquid could be used for
generating electricity.

To increasing the efficiency, the pipes would isolate better than now, and then energy loses
would be lesser. Technology of Denizli-Kızıldere which was founded in 1984 geothermal
plant is very old, (in 2007 capacity of the plant was 6 MW before privatization of the plant)
changing that old technology would increase the efficiency of the plant.
References

Dağdaş A, Öztürk R, Bekdemir Ş, Thermodynamic evaluation of Denizli Kızıldere

geothermal power plant and its performance improvement, Beşiktaş, İstanbul, Turkey, 18
December 2003
Hepbaşli A, Çanakçi C, Geothermal district heating applications in Turkey:
a case study of Izmir–Balcova, Bornova, Izmir, Turkey, 4 February 2002
Öztürk H K, Atalay O, Yılancı A, Hepbaşlı A, Energy and Exergy Analysis of
Kizildere
http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/geothermal.htm#intro
Mertoğlu O, Geothermal district heating experience in Turkey, Ankara, Turkey, June
2001
http://www.zoren.com.tr/TR/PRESS/default.asp?fPage=17&fId=31