A laboratory facility for testing combined cooling/heating and power (CHP) or more currently referred to as Integrated Energy Systems (IES) has been commissioned at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The scope of the facility is to test distributed generation (DG) with thermally-activated (TA) technologies for waste heat recovery. The designation of the IES Laboratory Facility as a “National User Facility” provides industry with greater access and control to various IES testing that can be conducted at the laboratory.
The IES laboratory test facility is concluding the testing of a 30 kW microturbine generator (MTG) with a first generation heat recovery unit (HRU), direct and indirectfired desiccant dehumidification systems and an indirectfired 10-ton single-effect absorption chiller. The MTG has been operated individually to obtain its baseline performance characteristics as well as in combination with various waste heat recovery configurations to test an MTG-based IES.