Study on a heat recovery system for the thermal power plant utilizing air cooling island

• A new heat recovery system for thermal power plant is presented.
• A mathematical model including heat transfer coefficients calculation is given.
• This heat recovery system is experimented at a thermal power plant.
• Performances of this system under different working conditions are simulated.

A new heat recovery system for CHP (combined heat and power) systems named HRU (heat recovery unit) is presented, which could recover the low grade heat of exhausted steam from the turbine at the thermal power plant directly. Heat recovery of exhausted steam is often accomplished by recovering the heat of cooling water in current systems. Therefore, two processes of heat transfer is needed at least. However, exhausted steam could be condensed in the evaporator of HRU directly, which reduce one process of heat transfer. A special evaporator is designed condense the exhausted steam directly. Simulated results are compared to experiments, which could include the calculation of heat transfer coefficients of different parts of HRU. It is found that about 25Mw of exhausted steam is recovered by this system. HRU could be promising for conventional CHP systems, which could increase the total energy efficiency obviously and enlarge the heating capacity of a built CHP system.