Direct-Contact Condensers for Solar Pond Power Production

摘要

The use of a direct-contact condenser as a way of reducing the cost of electricity from an organic Rankine cycle power plant coupled to a solar pond is examined. Three possible direct-contact heat exchangers are considered: drop-type, bubble-type, and packed-bed. Each condenser is designed to operate with a deaerator and a degasser to reduce contamination and loss of working fluid. Appropriate correlations and models from the literature for heat and mass transfer, particle terminal velocity, and particle production are presented. Each piece of equipment is sized and costed. Finally, the cost of the entire power plant is compared with that of a plant using a conventional shell-and-tube condenser. For two of the three direct-contact designs, a reduction in the cost of electricity is estimated. However, the reduction is not significant enough to compensate for the uncertainties involved in the relatively new technology of direct-contact heat transfer. (ERA citation 09:032915)