Air Cooled Condensers - Environmentally Cool

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) – Water is a thermal power plant’s most precious fluid, without it bearings aren’t cooled, boilers can’t make steam and generators don’t produce power to meet the needs of the customers. In the global debate concerning water usage, sustainability is considered primarily in terms of continuing to improve human well-being, while not undermining the natural resource base on which future generations will have to depend. In the United States, the largest uses for water are irrigation and cooling water for power plants, with each application using a similar amount of water. Water requirements often dictate power plant siting; thus, only a small fraction of the land area in the United States is considered suitable for siting power plants. Cooling by the use of air-cooled condensers is becoming an option as technology progresses and utilities try to offset one of their major expenses, as well as add more flexibility in the site selection and permitting process.

In 2004, the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued regulations requiring existing power plants using once-through cooling to reduce their environmental impact by establishing performance standards to reduce impingement and entrainment at these facilities. An alternative option is to implement Air Cooled Condenser technology. The major benefits of this technology are:

* The elimination of water-cooling from the condensing cycle

* Flexibility in the power plant site selection

* Decreased time required for plant permitting

Air-cooling technology can only be used in areas where there is appropriate ambient air temperature differential. This is essential for the conversion of steam back to condensate. Air-cooling also suffers from the inability to maintain designed plant output during the hottest periods of the year. Depending on the weather, a plant can experience capacity reductions of 10 to 20 percent on the steam side alone, because of increased turbine back-pressure. The problem is compounded since these hours represent peak load periods for most power systems and, for combined-cycle plants the gas-turbine side suffers simultaneous capacity reductions from increased ambient temperatures as well. Studies are being done to evaluate whether high-pressure water mist at the inlet side of condensers can be used to lower the ambient temperatures and improve system efficiencies.

Air-cooled condensers have been installed at several power plants in recent years, predominantly for new natural gas-fired combined-cycle units. For example, Astoria Energy LLC (Concord, Massachusetts) incorporates air-cooled technology at the Astoria Energy Power Project, a 1,000 MW combined cycle plant that started operation last year. El Segundo Power LLC, a subsidiary of NRG Energy Incorporated (Princeton, New Jersey) is planning to use air-cooled technology for a new 560 MW combined cycle unit addition at its El Segundo Power Station. The utilization of air cooled condensers at El Segundo provides a desirable environmental benefit over water cooled technology as the use of seawater for cooling purposes can be bypassed, negating the impact of effluent in the Pacific Ocean.

As this technology improves and is implemented throughout the industry read about it at www.industrialinfo.com.

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