Retrofitting of power plant condensers with heat pipe heat exchanger : A case study

Abstract

This paper explores the feasibility of using the heat pipe for power plant condenser. Power Plant Condenser, which is a vital component in the power plant, consists of thousands of non-ferrous tubes. A huge number of tubes are required to condense steam entering into the power plant condenser. Power plant people were facing number of operational and maintenance problems because of these huge number of condenser tubes. Also a large quantity of cooling water is required for this conventional condenser. In this paper an attempt made to replace thousands of condenser tubes by hundreds of “Heat Pipes”. This paper describes comparison between, the conventional condenser and heat pipe heat exchanger for condensing the given amount of steam. Comparison is also made between the required cooling water quantities in the both cases. This paper is also describes the design details of heat pipe that is material of heat pipe, heat pipe length, diameter of heat pipe for condensation purpose. Justification is also given for the type fluid and quantity of fluid used in the heat pipe. The feasibility study was carried out for smooth operation of the heat pipe that is without ceasing during operation. Experimental setup to conduct laboratory experiments is also described in this paper. Detailed discussion presented for the suitability of designed heat pipe for practical applications of power plant condensers. A brief description is given to the method of “retrofitting the heat pipes” into an existing power plant condenser .