Utilization of Waste Heat from Condenser of Steam Power Plant Using Organic Rankine Cycle

Steam power plants are one of the most popular plants for power production. Condenser is one of the important components of the steam power plants, where exiting fluid from the turbine is condensed. This process releases some heat to the environment. The aim of the present work is energy and exergy analysis of recovering the waste heat using Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC). To reach the best results, three working fluids (toluene, R600a and n-heptane) are selected as working fluids in the ORC. A parametric study is also performed to reveal effect of steam cycle condenser pressure on the cycle performance. Results showed that toluene has the best performance from the energy and exergy viewpoints. Boiler has the highest and pumps have the lowest exergy destruction values among the system components. Also, increasing the steam cycle condenser pressure decreases the net produced power and increases the total energy and exergy efficiencies.