Influence of environmental temperature on exergetic parameters of a combined cycle power plant

Abstract

Ambient conditions have significant effect on combined cycle power plants (CCPPs). Parameters-like efficiencies, fuel consumption, power production and even operation cost differ according to the ambient conditions that depend on the climate that cannot be changed. Therefore, deciding the location of the plant wisely would bring more efficient and profitable. In this paper, exergy analysis based on the second law of thermodynamics, considering environmental temperature variations, are performed for a cogeneration power plant. Mathematical model of analyse is introduced. Magnitudes of the variation of irreversibility, reversible power, power production and specific fuel consumption (SFC) are evaluated for the combined cycle. The results indicated that, decrease of environmental temperature augments the energy performance of the combined cycle form about 53% to 56% and improves the exergetic performance from about 51% to 56%. However, the augmentation via temperature decrease is not continuous. It is shown that the environmental temperature decrease causes a reduction about 5% in the SFC.