Januar y 2012 ASHRAE Jour nal 65

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Power Plant Water Use
S
everal recent Emerging Technologies columns have addressed
different forms of evaporative cooling, but have not closely
addressed the basic trade-offs involved in avoided electric energy
consumption vs. water consumption. In the December 2011 Emerging
Technologies column, we considered this from the residential consumers
point of view, comparing water costs incurred with evaporative cool-
ing with avoided electric energy costs. This column compares water
consumption of water evaporative cooling with the electric power plant
cooling water consumption that is avoided due to the reduced electric
energy consumption that results from evaporative cooling.
By Alissa Cooperman; John Dieckmann, Member ASHRAE; and James Brodrick, Ph.D., Member ASHRAE
Water/Electricity Trade-Offs in Evaporative Cooling, Part 2
Power generation in the United States
is dominated by thermal-electric power
plants, which use a heat-driven power
cycle to generate shaft power, which is
converted to electric power by electric
generators.
A report published in 2003 found that
89% of the electricity consumed in the
U.S. was generated at thermally driven,
water-cooled power plants.
Nationwide, power generating fa-
cilities were comprised of 89% ther-
mal-electric plants, 9% hydroelectric
facilities, and 2% renewable and other
sources.
1
A 2011 study, using data from 2010,
reveals the breakdown of power genera-
tion in the U.S., as shown in Table 1.
The rst four categories (coal-red,
natural gas, nuclear, and petroleum
red) are thermal-electric power plants.
While there was an increase in power
generation from renewable and other
resources, thermal-electric power plants
continue to supply 89% of the total
power generated.
2
Water Use at Power Plants
Water is mainly used at power plants
for cooling. This is accomplished in one
of two ways: once through or closed loop
(recirculating) cooling systems. These
systems both withdraw and consume
water, but not all water withdrawn is
consumed.
Once-through cooling draws water
from a reservoir, river, ocean, or other
body of water located near the power
plant through a heat exchanger (usually a
water-cooled condenser) and returns the
water to that body of water, at a higher
temperature.
Though little to no water is evapo-
rated (consumed) in the heat exchanger,
the increased temperature of the exiting
water causes increased evaporation
to occur from the receiving body of
water.
1
Closed-loop cooling systems usually
use evaporative cooling in a cooling
tower to reject the heat to the atmosphere
and maintain the temperature of the
cooling water loop.
Water consumption is the total of the
water that is evaporated for cooling plus
water lost to drift (unevaporated cooling
water droplets that are entrained in the
air passing though the cooling tower).
These water losses plus blowdown must
be replaced by freshwater withdrawals
from the power plants water supply.
While once-through cooling with-
draws more water, closed-loop cooling
withdraws less water but consumes
more.
1
Once-through cooling systems typi-
cally consume 4% of the water with-
drawn while closed-loop systems con-
sume 80% of the water withdrawn (with
the remainder returned to the source
body of water).
Though they consume more water,
closed-loop systems are favored and
supported by the Clean Water Act (2001)
for their reduced impact on the environ-
ment (less water withdrawn, no impact
on the temperature of the source body
of water).
3
Hydroelectric power generation does
not consume water for cooling, but the
increased surface area of the storage
reservoir results in increased evapora-
tion, compared with the evaporation
This article was published in ASHRAE Journal, January 2012. Copyright 2012 American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning
Engineers, Inc. Posted at www.ashrae.org. This article may not be copied and/or distributed electronically or in paper form without permission
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66 ASHRAE Jour nal Januar y 2012

that would have occurred from the un-
dammed river.
Based on estimates of the increased
evaporation from the surface of the water
storage reservoir, it consumes about 18
gallons/kWh (68 L/kWh).
4
Hydroelec-
tric power generation accounts for a
relatively small fraction of the nations
total electric output, so in this column
we only consider the water consumption
of thermal-electric power generation.
Table 2 (Page 68) compares the wa-
ter consumption for several types of
thermal-electric power plants, which
on average consume 0.47 gallons/kWh
(1.8 L/kWh).
1

A study of power generation in the
interior west shows that combined cycle
natural gas-red power plants consume
less water regardless of cooling system
type. Power generation in this region
withdraws 650 million gallons per day
(2.4 million kiloliters per day), or enough
water for 4 million people. Only 15% of
the cooling in this region is accomplished
with once through systems, and two fa-
cilities use dry cooling.
4
Water Consumption by Cooling
Technology
To examine the changes in water
consumption for cooling at the site
of energy consumption for cooling at
the site of energy consumption and to
drive cooling at the source of energy
generation, we will again consider the
two cases originally presented in the
Plant Type
% of Total Power
Generated
Coal-Fired 44.9
Natural Gas 23.8
Nuclear 19.6
Petroleum-Fired 0.9
Hydroelectric 4.5
Renewable & Other 6.3
Table 1: Power generated (by plant type)
in the U.S. in 2010.
2
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68 ASHRAE Jour nal ashr ae. or g Januar y 2012
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Plant Type
And Cooling System
Withdrawal
(cooling & process)
gallons/kWh
Consumption
(cooling)
gallons/kWh
Steam (Once-through) 20-50 0. 3
Steam (Recirculating) 0.3 0.8 0.24 0.64
Steam (Dry Cooling) 0.04 0
NG Combine Cycle (Once-through) 7.5-20 0.1
NG Combined Cycle (Recirculating) 0.23 0.18
NG Combined Cycle (Dry cooling) 0.04 0
Coal Combined Cycle (Recirculating) 0.38 0.2
Table 2: Water consumed based on thermal power plant cooling technology.
4
Power Plant Type
Power Provider Thermoelectric
(gallons/kWh)
Hydroelectric
(gallons/kWh)
Western Interconnect 0.38 12.4
Eastern Interconnect 0.49 55.1
Texas Interconnect 0.44 0.0
U.S. Aggregate 0.47 18.0
Table 3: Water consumed by electricity generation.
1
December 2011 Emerging Technologies
column:
Direct evaporative cooling, as in the
typical evaporative cooler (sometimes
called a swamp cooler), outdoor air is
contacted with water reducing the tem-
perature from the dry-bulb temperature
to a lower temperature approaching the
wet-bulb temperature. For this example,
it is assumed that the outdoor dry- and
wet-bulb temperatures are 90F (32C)
and 60F (16C), respectively, with air
delivered to the conditioned space at
65F (18C) dry-bulb temperature.
A water-cooled condenser operat-
ing at AHRI standard conditions (95F
[35C] dry bulb and 75F [24C] wet
bulb).
As previously calculated, direct
evaporative cooling consumes 3 gallons
per tonhour (3.23 L/kWh) of cooling
and about 250 Wh per tonhr of cooling.
Whereas, a SEER 13 central air-condi-
tioning system consumes 1200 Wh of
electricity per tonhr (341 Wh per kWh)
of cooling at AHRI standard conditions,
and an air-conditioning system with
an evaporatively precooled condenser
consumes 980 Wh and 2.5 gallons of
water per tonhr (2.69 L/kWh) of cool-
ing. Based on a consumers location, the
amount of source water consumed for
power generation per kWh varies.
Table 3 outlines the average water
consumption per kWh consumed for
three major power regions in the U.S.
Table 4 uses the average of 0.47
gallons of water consumed by thermal-
electric power plants per kWh generated
to compare the decrease in power plant
source water consumption attributable
to reduced electric power consumption
via evaporative cooling with the water
consumed by evaporative cooling.
Cooling Technology Site Electricity Consumed
(Wh/tonhr cooling)
Site Water Consumed
(gallons)
Source Water Consumed
at Power Plant
(gallons)
Direct Evaporative Cooler 250 3.0 0.12
Evaporative Condenser 980 2.5 0.46
Central AC (SEER 13) 1200 0 0.56
Table 4: Cooling site electricity and water consumption vs. source water consumption.
The bottom line is that the water
consumed for evaporative cooling is
not offset signicantly by power plant
water consumption savings.
There is a favorable trade-off with
evaporative cooling between energy and
water consumption for the consumer,
at least based on typical U.S. electric
energy and water rates.
References
1. Torcellini, P., N. Long, and R. J udkoff,
2003. Consumptive Water Use for U.S.
Power Production. NREL Technical Report
NREL/TP-550-33905. http://tinyurl.com/
Torcellini2003.
2. U.S. Energy Information Administra-
tion, DOE. 2011. Electric Power Monthly.
http://tinyurl.com/ElectricPower2011.
3. U.S. DOE. 2010. Water Vulnerabili-
ties for Existing Coal-red Power Plants.
DOE/NETL-2010/1429. http://tinyurl.com/
WaterVulnerabilities.
4. Clean Air Task Force. 2003.The Last
Straw: Water Use by Power Plants in the
Arid West. The Hewlett Foundation. http://
tinyurl.com/LastStrawWater.
Alissa Cooperman is a technologist
and J ohn Dieckmann is a director in
the Mechanical Systems Group of TIAX
LLC, Lexington, Mass. J ames Brodrick,
Ph.D., is a project manager with the
Building Technologies Program, U.S.
Department of Energy, Washington,
D.C.
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