Design of a lubrication unit and modelling of interstage attemperation for Mechanical Vapor Recompression systems

Global warming is a major issue of the recent years and has been promoted by consumption of fossil fuels and associated emission of greenhouse gases. To limit this phenomenon and meet the requirement of international climate agreement, a transition to more sustainable energy system is needed. With most of the industrial energy spent for process heating, heat pumps, and in particular MVR systems, can be a major tool to meet these objectives. The advantages of such systems include electrification, reduce of the use of fossil fuels, energy circularity, flexibility, and demand side management. All the effort, for this kind of solutions, are in the improving of the achievable temperature and of the compression technology. Provide a system with better compressors (in term of efficiency and consumption) that can reach higher temperature will make the difference in the domination of this energy sector market. In this work, other than a “state of the art” analysis, two fundamental problems related to compressors are assessed. The problem of vapor overheating after the compression is of interest to reduce losses and to make the overall compression more efficient. To do this an improvement of existing de-superheating system is studied. The other analysed issue has a mechanical nature. To provide a safe and reliable functioning of all the compressor parts a lube system is necessary. To guarantee that the design of the P&ID of a lubrication unit, as well as its dimensioning and optimization were performed. Making the de-superheating and lubrication systems the most economic possible have the final purpose of making the whole MVR system the most appetible as possible, creating a market and a technological advantage with respect to other suppliers or “traditional” technologies.