Steam Rankine Cycle

Steam Rankine cycle (SRC) is a widely used thermal power cycle due to its ideal properties of the fluid. Compared to organic Rankine cycle (ORC) and organic flash cycle (OFC), the working fluid and equipment are not expensive. A water treatment plant is associated with a steam thermal power plant. SRC is a power plant cycle in thermal power plant, bottoming cycle in a combined cycle power plant or power generation cycle for a waste heat recovery plant. In this chapter, the performance characteristics of SRC have been developed and analyzed. A single pressure heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) with a deaerator is considered to draw the heat from the industrial waste heat. The conditions for maximum power and maximum efficiency have been developed. Correlations are presented to find the HRSG pressure at the available hot gas supply temperature. The work is extended to a case study on SRC operating with the heat recovery of a cement factory. A power plant layout suitable to the identified waste heat sources from a cement factory has been developed. From the evaluation, it has been concluded that approximately 15 MW of electricity can be generated from its waste heat to meet the electrical load of 15 MW. It indicates that at the optimized conditions, it is possible to self-generate the electrical demand of the cement factory from its own waste heat recovery. The analysis recommended a low pressure in HRSG for maximum power generation.

Keywords: Heat recovery, Rankine cycle, Steam power cycle, Thermal efficiency, Thermal power plant.