Jishnu Bhattacharya

1st Semester - 2016-17

Lecture -20

Water/ steam as working fluid

Critical temperature is low - 375 C - the isothermal part of the heat
addition process can happen only below this temperature
With this restriction, the maximum temperature (in the superheated
region) can go only up to 600 C
Effective mean temperature of heat addition gets limited by the
properties of water
High moisture content in the turbine exhaust forces the use of reheater
The reheaters are costly and makes the plant layout complicated
In order to increase the mean effective temperature of heat addition, we
need to maintain a high boiler pressure the life of the boiler becomes
short as the stresses in the boiler pipes are higher due to higher pressure

Water/ steam as working fluid

In the condenser, the atmospheric condition limits the temperature of
heat rejection
In case of an atmospheric temperature of 40 C , the saturation pressure
is 0.075 bar need to maintain a large vacuum in the condenser
In case of a lower atmospheric temperature, the vacuum to be
maintained will be even higher
To maintain this vacuum, the design and material for the conderser
become costly
The saturated vapour line for steam in the T-s diagram is sufficiently
inclined to make the steam quality at the turbine exit worse for lower
pressure of heat rejection

What is desirable?
High critical temperature so that the saturation pressure at the
maximum possible temperature (material limit) is relatively low and the
boiler runs at lower pressure
The 2-phase dome is wide enough so that the major portion of heat
addition happens isothermally
Specific heat of liquid is low so that saturation temperature is reached
with relatively low amount of heat addition in the supercooled (nonisothermal way) region
The saturation pressure at the atmospheric temperature is above the
atmospheric pressure no need to maintain vacuum in the condenser

What is desirable?
The saturation vapour line is steep so that the quality at turbine exhaust
is better
Other criteria:
Should not freeze at any stage
Should be chemically stable at all temperature and pressure range
Non-toxic, non-corrosive, not-too-viscous
Etc.

What is desirable?

Way forward?
Even though there are few disadvantages of water as the working fluid
from the thermodynamic considerations, the economy of power plant
makes its the most widely used working fluid
However, at high temperature, there are few alternative fluids (mainly
liquid metals) mercury is the most common among these
At low temperature though, mercury is not at all suitable as saturation
pressure becomes so low that condenser has to be maintained at very
high vacuum
To optimize we combine two cycles a high temperature Hg cycle and a
low temperature water cycle to get the best performance this is called
binary cycle

Binary cycle
Note:
Heat rejected by
the topping cycle is
utilized in the heat
addition of the
bottoming cycle.

Binary cycle

Efficiency =

Binary cycle

Cascading

Performance improvement

Performance improvement

Performance improvement

Performance improvement

In general, for multiple stages of cascading,

OR

Performance improvement

The idea of cascading can dramatically improve performance:

For example, consider two cycles with efficiencies 0.5 and 0.4,

Performance improvement
Another example, Three cycles with efficiencies 0.5, 0.4 and 0.4,

It is never possible to obtain this kind of high efficiency in a single Rankine

cycle.
However,
The temperature range over which such cascade power plants can
operate between has limits set by materials considerations
Cost increases exorbitantly
In power plants cascading is seldom used
However with the introduction of solar thermal power plants with
organic Rankine cycles, the cascading idea is being reconsidered.

Combined cycle
Similar idea as cascading but now not two Rankine cycles but one gas
turbine cycle and a Rankine cycle are combined