Gas Microturbine As a Main Source of Energy for Industrial Laundry – Feasibility Study

Professional laundry service is a leading solution for laundry maintenance in medical care, tourism, catering, and other commercial services. Industrial laundry is a significant worldwide sector with high energy demand. Industrial laundries use steam for heating the washing water, drying and ironing. Combined heat and power production is a promising and straightforward way to produce energy for the whole process. A gas microturbine (GMT) is a source of heat and electrical power with an efficiency of up to 90%. The laundry process development could be associated mainly with eliminating steam production and improving water utilisation. This paper provides an overview of the latest trends concerning the laundry process, introduces the grey-box model of the laundry process with GMT, evaluates several scenarios using the hot flue gas to operate the laundry machines, including their economy. GMT achieves the lowest operational cost and the highest primary energy savings (25.9%) within the evaluated scenarios, with an overall efficiency of 80.3%. The payback period for the greenfield project is 2.8 years and 5.8 for retrofit. It was found that GMT is an excellent source of electrical and thermal energy for industrial laundries utilising the hot flue gas for direct linen drying.