Assessment of Thermal Efficiency of Steam Power Plant Cycles Using the Pinch Method

摘要

Due to the limited existing fossil fuel energy resources, it is important to optimize energy consumption and to minimize the energy waste. The Pinch technology can be applied as a tool to analyze the ability of using heat recovery in chemical and industrial processes. This issue is important especially in petrochemical and power plant processes in which there are large amounts of fuel consumption. In these cases, even a fraction of one percent savings in fuel consumption provides important savings in energy and expenses. In order to study the capability of current steam power plant cycle design methods and tools, as well as feasibility assessment of increasing the thermal efficiency of steam power plants, Ghaem and Wisconsin power plant cycles were analyzed using the Pinch method. Similar results were obtained for both power plant cycles which had different numbers of feed water heaters. These results could be expected when the Pinch method was applied to analysis of any existing steam power plant cycles.