New proposal of medium temperature thermoelectric conversion in power plant

There exists a large amount of unused energy in power generation plants, such as condenser waste heat which accounts for about 50% of plant thermal output. However, it consists of relatively low temperature energy, so it is difficult to generate electricity by the conventional water-steam cycle. In order to raise the efficiency, we have to install an energy recovering system to heat exchangers which have high entropy production as the boiler and the feedwater heaters instead of the condenser. A new concept of electricity generating system for the feedwater heater has been proposed. In this concept, the total generation efficiency is improved by applying the medium temperature thermoelectric generation module into heat exchanging walls or tubes in the feedwater heaters focusing on the reduction of the entropy production. The efficiency improvement of the proposed system is 1% and the allowed cost of the proposed system is proportional to the net increase of the electric power.