Modelling of aluminum-fuelled power plant with steam-hydrogen enthalpy utilization

Abstract

Present paper is devoted to the modelling of aluminum-fuelled power plants which employ an aluminum-water reactor for hydrogen and heat production. We considered two new schemes for power plants with aluminum-water reactors producing high-temperature steam-hydrogen mixture: a power plant with a steam-hydrogen turbine, condenser and air-hydrogen fuel cell and a power plant with a steam-hydrogen turbine, combustion chamber and steam-gas turbine. Parameters of the aluminum-water reactor described in the paper correspond to those of the recently developed and tested aluminum-water reactor: pressure – 15 MPa, temperature – 600 K, steam to hydrogen mass ratio – 40. It was shown that the electrical efficiency can be increased from 12% to 25–30% for the power plant with an air-hydrogen fuel cell and to 18–25% for that with a combustion chamber and steam-gas turbine. The total efficiency of such power plants can reach 80%. Moreover, the efficiency of aluminum-fuelled power plants can be further increased by heat regeneration or heat transfer to the secondary circuit. The proposed calculation method provides high accuracy and can be used to predict the performance of power plants with aluminum-water reactors under different operation conditions. In general, the proposed method can be used to simulate utilization of the enthalpy of high-temperature steam-hydrogen mixture from various sources.