KU Steam Power Plant Heat Recovery Component Energy Savings and Evaluation of Pumping System Power Consumption

Abstract

Heat recovery is an essential process in any steam power plant because large amounts of energy are lost during the process of generating steam, whether with vented steam or drained hot water. So heat exchangers are used, to reclaim that energy before being wasted. According to the US Department of Energy, around 6,945 MMBtu/year could be saved by using a heat exchanger to reclaim vented steam energy under certain operation conditions [1]. Two heat exchangers are used in the KU steam power plant. One is as vent condenser to recover energy from steam and non-condensable gases that have to be vented from the deaerator to the atmosphere; and the other is to recover energy from blowdown water that has to be drained continuously from the boiler. Both the vented steam and the drained blowdown water have temperatures of 220-240 ℉. In this study, data was gathered around these heat recovery components in the KU steam power plant, and the energy reclaimed by these components was investigated of the year 2016. The heat loss due to natural convection around these components was reconsidered in this study, as well as the pumping system power consumption.