Development of a new method for optimization of power plant efficiency, 1. steam cycle

In the last decades, optimization of energy systems, specially power plants, has been a main concern during the design and retrofit of process industries. However, in power plants most efforts have focused on improvement of equipment efficiencies and materials of construction allowing as high temperatures and pressures as possible. In this paper, a new approach has been used for integration of the process units, such as boiler, turbine, pre heaters and etc., and also optimization of the operating variables. The method is based on the Combined Pinch and Exergy Analyses which is a thermodynamic approach rather than mathematical optimization. This method has also been applied to study a real power plant in Iran and results showed an improvement of 2.32% in cycle efficiency (form %41.98 to %44.30) which is equivalent to %5.3 reduction in fuel consumption