JA
cIMOVI
c ET AL.
economic viability (low capital expenditures combined
with low operating expenses and reliable plant operation).
General recommendations for selecting the optimal
cycle are as follows:
• minimum vapor pressure at turbine outlet is limited to
the atmospheric pressure;
• difference between the wet-bulb temperature of the
fluid and its temperature at the pump suction should
not be lower than 5
C (in order to avoid cavitation);
• cooling limit (ie, minimum temperature of working
fluid should be limited to 32
C—liquid temperature at
the pump suction);
• no reheating of working fluid between turbine stages;
• vapor at turbine exit: superheated or saturated (use of
condensing turbines and vacuum pump is avoided,
resulting in lower capital expenditures and lower oper-
ating expenses).
Advantages of back pressure turbines over the con-
densing turbines are:
• back pressure turbines are smaller than condensing
turbines and they do not require auxiliary systems,
which results in lower capital expenditures with
respect to the condensing turbines. For the same rea-
sons, back pressure turbines have significantly smaller
footprint than condensing turbines;
• back pressure turbines require no auxiliary equipment,
and so the associated operating expenses are low;
• back pressure turbines have smaller blades than con-
densing turbines having the same power output.
Smaller blades result in reduced risk of blade
excitation;
• fact that there is no condensation in the back pressure
turbines eliminates the possibility of creating silicate
and salt deposits. Consequently, the required boiler
feed water quality is lower;
• formation of water droplets does not occur anywhere
in the back pressure turbines, and consequently the
probability of blade erosion is very low.
Cooling temperature limit, recommended to be set to
32
C, is selected as it proves to result in a sufficient tem-
perature difference in the working fluid condenser in
most cases. Furthermore, this limit can easily be reached
if cooling towers are used for cooling water treatment, as
explained in the following example. Considering that the
following ambient conditions valid (particular example is
valid for August in the region of south-east Europe):
• maximum average temperature: 27.3
C;
• relative humidity: 60%;
• wet bulb temperature 21.3
C;
• cooling water temperature at cooling tower exit:
24
C (considering wet bulb temperature approach
of 3
C);
• temperature difference allowed in the condenser: 7
C
to 8
C.
Considering even an extreme case of external temper-
ature of 40
C and relative humidity of 30% (wet bulb tem-
perature 24.7
C), the cooling water temperature at the
condenser inlet is 28
C, resulting in allowable tempera-
ture margin in the condenser of 4
C.
8 | ANALYSIS OF ALTERNATIVE
CYCLES
For all further analyses of various cycles, ammonia-water
binary mixture will be considered with the thermo-
physical properties calculated using the procedures from
References 11 and 12. As a first step, the original NBC
published in Reference 29 and shown in Figure 4 has
been analyzed and verified using the original data. Differ-
ences in the original data presented in Reference 29 and
the calculated fluid properties using the procedures from
References 11 and 12, are discussed in Reference 12.
Other plant conditions considered throughout the
analyses are as follows:
• pump efficiency: 0.6 (isentropic efficiency: 0.85)—
pump efficiency is defined as the product of isentropic
efficiency and transmission efficiency;
• turbine efficiency: 0.85529
As already indicated, considering that the molecular
mass of ammonia is close to that of water, turbines
designed and manufactured for use in steam applications
can be used in ammonia-water cycles considered in further
text. All the cycles subject to the analysis have the input
parameters defined as recommended in Reference 18.
Benefit of NBC is that the state of vapor at turbine
outlet and of liquid at pump inlet can be controlled by
pressure and composition of the working fluid (in this
case, binary mixture of ammonia-water). In order to
guarantee that the vapor downstream of the turbine is
superheated (at the pressure of 1 bar absolute), the mini-
mum mole fraction of ammonia at turbine inlet defined
in Table 3 must be achieved.
For the wet-bulb temperature of twb = 37
C, the
maximum ammonia fraction at the pump inlet
depending on the pressure is given in Table 4.
If the following suggested parameters (indicated and
explained beforehand) are respected: