A novel design-point computational program for thermal power plants applications: energy, exergy and economic (3E) analysis

Resumo

© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering.For a long time, thermal power plants play important roles in world electricity and are expected to continue, at least, in the next decades. However, the finitude of fossil fuel sources leads to the crucial need for improving the existing power generation systems. In this study, an in-house computational code was developed and validated to evaluate the energy, exergy and economic performance for thermal power plants applications. Based on operating data of an actual lignite coal-fired steam power plant, two cycles were designed and compared. In the cycle in which more components were added, the fuel consumption was 9.44% lower to produce the same amount of power, making more effective use of the fuel resource. This substantial reduction in fuel consumption reflected lower electricity average costs for this plant. Comparing to the electricity price of a country using the same type of fuel, it was found that it could be lower by 1.62 percentage points for household consumers. Although the higher costs with capital investment and operational and maintenance (O&M) due to the addition of these components, the attractive economic performance of the cycle reduces the annual fuel costs and offsets the increase in capital and O&M costs.

Palavras-chave