A tendency to increase the importance of so-called dispersed generation, based on the local energy sources and the working systems utilizing both the fossil fuels and the renewable energy resources is observed nowadays. Generation of electricity on industrial or domestic scale together with production of heat can be obtained for example through employment of the ORC systems. It is mentioned in the EU directive 2012/27/EU for cogenerative production of heat and electricity. For such systems the crucial points are connected with the heat exchangers, which should be small in size but be able to transfer high heat fluxes. In presented paper the prototype microjet heat exchanger dedicated for heat recovery systems is introduced. Its novel construction is described together with the systematical experimental analysis of heat transfer and flow characteristics. Reported results showed high values of the overall heat transfer coefficient and slight increase in the pressure drop. The results of microjet heat exchanger were compared with the results of commercially available compact plate heat exchanger.

The results of investigations conducted on the prototype of vapour driven micro-CHP unit integrated with a gas boiler are presented. The system enables cogeneration of heat and electric energy to cover the energy demand of a household. The idea of such system is to produce electricity for own demand or for selling it to the electric grid – in such situation the system user will became the prosumer. A typical commercial gas boiler, additionally equipped with an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) module based on environmentally acceptable working fluid can be regarded as future generation unit. In the paper the prototype of innovative domestic cogenerative ORC system, consisting of a conventional gas boiler and a small size axial vapour microturbines (in-house designed for ORC and the commercially available for Rankine cycle (RC)), evaporator and condenser were scrutinised. In the course of study the fluid working temperatures, rates of heat, electricity generation and efficiency of the whole system were obtained. The tested system could produce electricity in the amount of 1 kWe. Some preliminary tests were started with water as working fluid and the results for that case are also presented. The investigations showed that domestic gas boiler was able to provide the saturated/superheated ethanol vapour (in the ORC system) and steam (in the RC system) as working fluids.