Introduction

Conventional power plants emit the heat created as a by-product of

electricity generation into the environment through cooling towers, flue gas,
or by other means. CHP or a bottoming cycle captures the by-product heat
for domestic or industrial heating purposes, either very close to the plant, or
—especially in Scandinavia and eastern Europe—as hot water for district
heating with temperatures ranging from approximately 80 to 130 °C. This is
also called decentralized energy.

In the United States, Con Edison distributes 30 billion pounds of

350 °F/180 °C steam each year through its seven cogeneration plants to
100,000 buildings in Manhattan—the biggest steam district in the world.
The peak delivery is 10 million pounds per hour (corresponding to approx.
2.5 GW). Cogeneration is a thermodynamically efficient use of fuel. In
separate production of electricity some energy must be rejected as waste
heat, but in cogeneration this thermal energy is put to good use.

Some tri-cycle plants have utilized a combined cycle in which several

thermodynamic cycles produced electricity, and then a heating system was
used as a condenser of the power plant's bottoming cycle. Tri-cycle plants
can have thermal efficiencies above 80%.

CHP is most efficient when the heat can be used on site or very close to it.
Overall efficiency is reduced when the heat must be transported over longer
distances. This requires heavily insulated pipes, which are expensive and
inefficient; whereas electricity can be transmitted along a comparatively
simple wire, and over much longer distances for the same energy loss.

Cogeneration plants are commonly found in district heating systems of big

towns, hospitals, prisons, oil refineries, paper mills, wastewater treatment
plants, thermal enhanced oil recovery wells and industrial plants with large
heating needs.

Thermally enhanced oil recovery (TEOR) plants often produce a substantial

amount of excess electricity. After generating electricity, these plants pump
leftover steam into heavy oil wells so that the oil will flow more easily,
increasing production.

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 Types of Plants

Topping cycle plants primarily produce electricity from a steam turbine. The
exhausted steam is then condensed, and the low temperature heat released
from this condensation is utilized for e.g. district heating.

Bottoming cycle plants produce high temperature heat for industrial

processes, then a waste heat recovery boiler feeds an electrical plant.
Bottoming cycle plants are only used when the industrial process requires
very high temperatures, such as furnaces for glass and metal manufacturing,
so they are less common.

Large cogeneration systems provide heating water and power for an

industrial site or an entire town. Common CHP plant types are:

• Gas turbine CHP plants using the waste heat in the flue gas of gas
turbines
• Gas engine CHP plants (in the US "gaseous fuelled") use a
reciprocating gas engine which is generally more competitive than a
gas turbine up to about 5 MW.
• Combined cycle power plants adapted for CHP
• Steam turbine CHP plants that use the heating system as the steam
condenser for the steam turbine.
• Molten-carbonate fuel cells have a hot exhaust, very suitable for
heating.

Smaller cogeneration units may use a reciprocating engine or Stirling

engine. The heat is removed from the exhaust and the radiator. These
systems are popular in small sizes because small gas and diesel engines are
less expensive than small gas- or oil-fired steam-electric plants.

Some cogeneration plants are fired by biomass, or industrial and municipal

waste.

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 Combustion (Gas) Turbines

Combustion turbine plants operate on the Brayton cycle. They use a

compressor to compress the inlet air upstream of a combustion
chamber. Then the fuel is introduced and ignited to produce a high
temperature, high-pressure gas that enters and expands through the
turbine section. The turbine section powers both the generator and
compressor. Combustion turbines are also able to burn a wide range of
liquid and gaseous fuels from crude oil to natural gas. The combustion
turbine’s energy conversion typically ranges between 25% to 35%
efficiency as a simple cycle.

Simple Cycle Power Plants (Open Cycle)

The modern power gas turbine is a high-technology package that is
comprised of a compressor, combustor, power turbine, and generator, as
shown in the figure "Simple-Cycle Gas Turbine".

Fig: Gas Turbine Cycle

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In a gas turbine, large volumes of air are compressed to high pressure in a
multistage compressor for distribution to one or more combustion gases
from the combustion chambers power an axial turbine that drives the
compressor and the generator before exhausting to atmosphere.

In this way, the combustion gases in a gas turbine power the turbine directly,
rather than requiring heat transfer to a water/steam cycle to power a steam
turbine, as in the steam plant. The latest gas turbine designs use turbine inlet
temperatures of 1,500C (2,730F) and compression ratios as high as 30:1 (for
aero derivatives) giving thermal efficiencies of 35 percent or more for a
simple-cycle gas turbine.

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 Steam Turbine Power Plants

Steam turbine power plants operate on a Rankine cycle. The steam is

created by a boiler, where pure water passes through a series of tubes
to capture heat from the firebox and then boils under high pressure to
become superheated steam. The heat in the firebox is normally
provided by burning fossil fuel (e.g. coal, fuel oil or natural gas).
However, the heat can also be provided by biomass, solar energy or
nuclear fuel. The superheated steam leaving the boiler then enters the
steam turbine throttle, where it powers the turbine and connected
generator to make electricity. After the steam expands through the
turbine, it exits the back end of the turbine, where it is cooled and
condensed back to water in the surface condenser. This condensate is
then returned to the boiler through high-pressure feed pumps for reuse.
Heat from the condensing steam is normally rejected from the
condenser to a body of water, such as a river or cooling tower.Modern
large steam turbine plants (over 500 MW) have efficiencies
approaching 40-45%.

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 Gas Turbine with Regeneration

The simple cycle efficiency can be increased by installing a recuperator

or waste heat boiler onto the turbine’s exhaust. A recuperator captures
waste heat in the turbine exhaust stream to preheat the compressor
discharge air before it enters the combustion chamber.

Fig. Gas Turbine with Regeneration

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 Combined Cycle

A combined cycle is characteristic of a power producing engine or plant that

employs more than one thermodynamic cycle. Heat engines are only able to
use a portion of the energy their fuel generates (usually less than 50%). The
remaining heat from combustion is generally wasted. Combining two or
more "cycles" such as the Brayton cycle and Rankine cycle results in
improved overall efficiency.

In a combined cycle power plant (CCPP), or combined cycle gas turbine

(CCGT) plant, a gas turbine generator generates electricity and the waste
heat is used to make steam to generate additional electricity via a steam
turbine; this last step enhances the efficiency of electricity generation. Most
new gas power plants in North America and Europe are of this type. In a
thermal power plant, high-temperature heat as input to the power plant,
usually from burning of fuel, is converted to electricity as one of the outputs
and low-temperature heat as another output. As a rule, in order to achieve
high efficiency, the temperature difference between the input and output heat
levels should be as high as possible.

This is achieved by combining the Rankine (steam) and Brayton (gas)

thermodynamic cycles. Such an arrangement used for marine propulsion is
called Combined Gas (turbine) And Steam (turbine) (COGAS).

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 Design Principle

In a thermal power station water is the working medium. High pressure

steam requires strong, bulky components. High temperatures require
expensive alloys made from nickel or cobalt, rather than inexpensive steel.
These alloys limit practical steam temperatures to 655 °C while the lower
temperature of a steam plant is fixed by the boiling point of water. With
these limits, a steam plant has a fixed upper efficiency of 35 to 42%.

An open circuit gas turbine cycle has a compressor, a combustor and a

turbine. For gas turbines the amount of metal that must withstand the high
temperatures and pressures is small, and lower quantities of expensive
materials can be used. In this type of cycle, the input temperature to the
turbine (the firing temperature), is relatively high (900 to 1,400 °C). The
output temperature of the flue gas is also high (450 to 650 °C). This is
therefore high enough to provide heat for a second cycle which uses steam
as the working fluid; (a Rankine cycle).

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 Combined cycle power plant

In a combined cycle power plant, the heat of the gas turbine's exhaust is used
to generate steam by passing it through a heat recovery steam generator
(HRSG) with a live steam temperature between 420 and 580 °C. The
condenser of the Rankine cycle is usually cooled by water from a lake, river,
sea or cooling towers. This temperature can be as low as 15 °C

Fig. Combined Cycle Power Plant

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 Results

By combining both gas and steam cycles, high input temperatures and low
output temperatures can be achieved. The efficiency of the cycles add,
because they are powered by the same fuel source. So, a combined cycle
plant has a thermodynamic cycle that operates between the gas-turbine's
high firing temperature and the waste heat temperature from the condensers
of the steam cycle. This large range means that the Carnot efficiency of the
cycle is high. The actual efficiency, while lower than this is still higher than
that of either plant on its own. CHP is one of the most cost efficient methods
of reducing carbon emissions of heating in cold climates.

The thermal efficiency of a combined cycle power plant is the net power
output of the plant divided by the heating value of the fuel. If the plant
produces only electricity, efficiencies of up to 60% can be achieved. In the
case of combined heat and power generation, the Energy Utilisation Factor
(overall efficiency) can increase to 85%.

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 Conclusions
By this, we can conclude that more thermal efficiency can be achieved. This
approach provides with superior performance, decreased operating expenses
and increased return on investment. Better utilisation of fuel will be possible
using this combined cycle. It means that less fuel needs to be consumed to
produce the same amount of useful energy.

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 Bibliography

www.hitachi.com

www.cogeneration.net

catalog.asme.org/books/PrintBook/Handbook_Cogeneration

www.team-bhp.com/forum/technical-stuff/35859-honda-researching-
advanced-hybrid-drive-rankine-cycle-co-generation

www.gas-turbines.com

www.howstuffworks.com

www.gepower.com

igti.asme.org

www.kawasakigasturbines.com

www.Siemens.com

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