Exergy Analysis of Gautami Combined Cycle Power Plant, India: A Case Study.

The continual need to optimize costs and the recent competitive pressure from renewables have seen renewed focus on improving and optimizing plant components' efficiency. Combined cycle power plants are better from thermal efficiency point of view compared with coal-based power plants. Exergy analysis offers better alternative to energetic analysis based on simpler model of energy balance only. Identifying system energy losses is easier using exergy analysis, making it a better analytical tool. The paper presents a case study of exergy analysis of Gautami combined cycle power plant. Component level theoretical analysis is done first and applied to the operational data from the plant. The results showed that the gas turbine combustion chamber has the highest exergy loss of 33%. Impact factors like ambient temperature, pressure ratio, turbine inlet temperature and heat recovery steam boiler are also considered on the exergy losses of the power plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]