Preliminary design of a proposed geothermal power plant in NW-Sabalan area, Azerbaijan-Iran

Abstract

Mt. Sabalan geothermal field is a high-temperature area under development. The first exploration wells have been drilled in the northwest area and shown it to be a water-dominated system. Well–pad B includes production wells NWS-4 and NWS-5R and will also accommodate additional production wells. Plans are underway to develop a power plant at well-pad B by using the available resource from these wells. The main objectives of this paper are to design and to determine the optimum parameters for the technical operation of the system and optimize the electrical power production process. It has been assumed that the properties of five additional wells are the same as those of the existing well, NWS-4. The steam condensing cycle combined with a binary ORC was selected as the power generation system. The obtained results show that based on these assumptions the highest power output from a steam condensing plant alone can be 19.5 MWe with 3 and 0.08 bar-a for separator and condenser pressures, respectively. But the optimum output power from a combined steam and binary plant has been calculated as 26.2 MWe.