The influence of condenser cooling seawater fouling on the thermal performance of a nuclear power plant

• We perform a thermodynamic analysis and energy balance of a nuclear power plant.
• Studied the effect of fouling on the thermal performance of a nuclear power plant.
• The results demonstrate that the fouling has an adverse effect on the performance.
• The fouling factor changes within the range 0.00015–0.00035 m2 K/W.
• The output power and thermal efficiency are reduced by 1.36 and 0.45%, respectively.

This study performs a thermodynamic analysis and energy balance to study the effect of fouling change on the thermal performance of the condenser and the thermal efficiency of a proposed nuclear power plant. The study is carried out on a pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant. The results of the study show that the increasing of fouling factor decreases the power output and the thermal efficiency of the nuclear power plant. The main results of this study is that the impact of an increase in the condenser cooling seawater fouling factor in the range 0.00015–0.00035 m2 K/W is led to a decrease in the plant output power and thermal efficiency of 1.36% and 0.448%, respectively. The present paper researches into a real practical factor that has significant negative effect on the thermal efficiency of the nuclear power plants, which is fouling of condenser cooling seawater. This is abundantly important since one of the top goals of new power stations are to increase their thermal efficiency, and to prevent or minimize the reasons that lead to loss of output power.