On Prospective of MHD Electrical Power Generator on Aluminum Oxidation Products

Abstract

During the intensive studies of MHD electrical power generation at base load facilities performed in many industrial countries in 60-80 th of the last century the physical and technical background of such a technology was successfully formed. The main practical problem not fully resolved up to now is the electrical conductivity level of the most available working media considered at that time (the combustion products of fossil fuel such as coal, oil and natural gas in preheated and (typically) seeded with well ionized materials – alkali metals). The rather low electrical conductivity available under such conditions ( ~ 10mOh/m +/-) results in the rather high level magnetic induction ( >6 Tesla) that is still technically problematic for the linear scale of the MHD channel ~1m×1m×10m. In this paper a novel concept of the MHD generator working with the high temperature products of aluminum hydrotation with «hot» steam is described. A number of advantages in compare with the «traditional» combustion products resulting in significantly higher electrical conductivity are found. Increasing the conductivity in three time leads to decreasing of the magnetic system critical requirements and consequently to more practical system configuration. In particularly we evaluate the enthalpy extraction at the level of 25-30% that promising the real prospective for such a power production system. The key process of the proposed concept is the high temperature generation of the aluminum hydratation products which consists of mostly of hydrogen and alumina (in condense phase). I. Introduction HE physical-technical aspects and technological background of the large scale electrical power generation with magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD) method of the conversion of the high temperature gas flow energy has been developed within the intensive R&D work, undertaken in 60-80 th of the last century by the leading industrial countries. In the USSR one of the most successful program was the state R&D program of MHD generators using the fossil fuel combustion products for the base load applications 1,2 . In particular, this program has resulted in the development of the auxiliary equipment for the novel power plants to be working T