Exergoeconomic analysis of a combined water and power plant

Abstract

The efficiency of a combined cycle (CC) power plant deteriorates drastically under part-load operation. Developments in desalination methods such as Reverse Osmosis (RO) require mainly electricity to produce water. Moreover, thermal desalination system like MED (multi-effect distillation) requires low grade heat source eg. waste heat from power plant. So, an integrated system (Combined water and power plant, CWPP) offers synergistic improvement. A simulation model was developed to predict the performance of the system and it showed the performance can be improved with the integration of MED and RO.

When MED and RO plants are coupled to the combined power plant, the thermal efficiency of the plant increases by about 15%. This leads to a lower cost of water production, which is about 0.63 US$/m3. The study of the CWPP has shown that, the CC+MED+RO produce the distillate and the electricity with the lowest cost under the set conditions. Also, CC+MED+RO exhibits maximum overall exete