Diagnosis and redesign of power plants using combined Pinch and Exergy Analysis

Results from this work show that the elimination of cross pinch heat transfer in the process operation conditions will allow an increment of 0.81% (from 29.48% to 30.30%) on the cycle efficiency and a reduction of 2.4% on the cooling water required (from 5032 t/h to 4914 t/h). This indicates that even when the plant efficiency can be improved by using new or rehabilitated equipment, some energy losses could remain due to an inefficient thermal integration.