Thermal analysis of an integrated solar combined cycle power plant and its application in southern Iraq

Abstract

Recently, simple cycle play a significant role in electric power production in Iraq. However, those units suffer from low thermal efficiency and low power output. In the present work, theoretical study is carried out aiming to improve the performance of (AL-Amara station 125MW). The present work includes three parts: the first part focus on the effect of ambient temperature on the performance of simple cycle including mass flow rate, power output, thermal efficiency and other parameters. In the second parts, a modification to simple cycle is implanted to be a combined cycle. The third part is studied the benefit of using solar unit for producing more steam to be supplied to the heat recovery steam generator wishing to produce more power and low emissing. Regarding, to simple gas turbine unit, the obtained results show that the mass flow rate is decreased nearly (10.8%) when the ambient temperature increased from (15-50) ºC. However, this reduction in mass flow rate of air is led to significant reduction in power output and thermal efficiency nearly (22.6%,13.2%) respectively. In the second parts, applying combine mode show a significant increase in power output and thermal efficiency nearly (32.5% and 32.3%) respectively. while the specific fuel consumption is decrease nearly (32.19%). Finally, the third parts when solar units are used, the gathered results show an acceptable increase for the amount of steam produced via solar units (21.02kg/s). The overall performance of the integrated cycle shows that the power output and the thermal efficiency increased nearly (11.28%and10%).