A new Rankine cycle for hydrogen-fired power generation plants and its exergetic efficiency

Abstract

A novel power generation cycle is proposed in this paper taking hydrogen as fuel and using steam generated by hydrogen firing as working fluid. The progress of the development work and side issues such as the application of hydrogen combustion turbines to environmentally clean fossil fuel power plants for early commercialisation of the system are reviewed. We propose the hydrogen-fired Rankine cycle as similar to (C) type developed earlier by Hisadome et al. and Sugishita et al. and then making a new design of it by increasing the performance characteristics and efficiencies with (reheating, regenerative and recuperation) of the working fluid of the bottoming cycle respectively, and in this case we present two types (C1 and C2). In the case of type C2 the cycle is called the "New Rankine Cycle". These cycles are also compared with the Rankine cycle of type (C) for hydrogen-fired to show the advantages of the performance characteristics of the new design at which the highest value of exergetic efficiency reaches 63.58% as HHV at 1700°C of the combustor discharge temperature. These cycles are analysed through thermodynamics, particularly by exergy analysis, and the performance characteristics of the cycles are also studied.