Utilization of Waste Heat from Condenser of Steam Power Plant Using Organic Rankine Cycle

Steam power plants are one of the most popular plants forpower production. Condenser is one of the importantcomponents of the steam power plants, where exiting fluidfrom the turbine is condensed. This process releases someheat to the environment. The aim of the present work isenergy and exergy analysis of recovering the waste heatusing Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC). To reach the bestresults, three working fluids (toluene, R600a and n-heptane)are selected as working fluids in the ORC. A parametricstudy is also performed to reveal effect of steam cyclecondenser pressure on the cycle performance.Results showed that toluene has the best performancefrom the energy and exergy viewpoints. Boiler has thehighest and pumps have the lowest exergy destructionvalues among the system components. Also, increasing thesteam cycle condenser pressure decreases the net producedpower and increases the total energy and exergy efficiencies.