Conventional coal-based thermal power plants have an average overall efficiency in the range of 35-38 %. Any increase in the percent efficiency of these power plants, is subjected to constraints posed by maximum and minimum temperatures, which are restricted by the creep property of materials and ambient temperature, respectively. Hence, an increase of efficiency beyond certain limits is not possible without optimising the process parameters associated with reheat and regenerative cycles. In this work, an attempt is made to optimise reheat and regenerative cycle process parameters such as, reheat pressure, tapping pressure of bled steam, and mass fraction of bled steam, in order to achieve maximum cycle efficiency. The optimisation of the process parameters was achieved by developing a simulation program using Microsoft Visual Studio. This program takes into account isentropic efficiencies of turbines and pumps and pressure drop in the boiler, and it can be used to simulate the optimum operating conditions of multi-stage reheat & regenerative cycle based thermal power plants. A comparison between the efficiencies of eight kinds of steam power cycles, at optimised conditions, has been made for different boiler pressures and steam temperatures at the turbine inlet. This comparison can aid power plant designers in choosing appropriate steam power cycles for a given set of operating conditions. It is observed that the results obtained from the program, such as, the optimum reheat pressures for two stage reheat cycles and optimum bled steam tapping pressures for two stage regenerative cycles are in good agreement with the published literature.
Optimizing the Operating Conditions of Boilers of Thermal Power Plants Using the Criterion of Minimum Power Losses