Parametric Assessment of the Thermal Performance of Coal-Fired Power Plant

Abstract

Exergy analysis has been found to be a useful method for improving the conversion efficiency of energy resources, since it helps to identify locations, types and true magnitudes of wastes and losses. The aim of this research is to analyze the effect of the operation conditions on the performance of coal-fired power plants. As well, this study focuses on the effect of different feedwater heaters' numbers that lead to the highest exergy destruction of the coal-fired power plants. For different values of the superheated steam temperature and the pressure, a parametric study was conducted to determine the efficiency of the coal-fired power plant. The results show that, when the pressures and temperature of the superheated steam increases the evaporator temperature will increases too. Increasing the temperature of evaporator rises the average maximum temperature of the cycle, which improves the thermal efficiency of the cycle as well as the powerplant efficiency. The results show that, at higher boiler pressures and temperatures, the temperature difference between the water/steam and hot gases of the boiler is reduced which means the irreversibility associated with the heat transfer process decreases. Therefore, by increasing the pressure and temperature of the superheater, the exergy efficiency of the thermal cycle is improved. It was observed that operating the coal-fired power plant at high superheated pressure and temperatures produce lead to reduce the exergy losses.