Earth-Cooling Air Tunnels for Thermal Power Plants: Initial Design by CFD Modelling

Eduardo de la Rocha Camba and Fontina Petrakopoulou
Additional contact information
Eduardo de la Rocha Camba: Department of Thermal and Fluid Engineering, University Carlos III of Madrid, Avenida de la Universidad 30, Leganés, 28911 Madrid, Spain
Fontina Petrakopoulou: Department of Thermal and Fluid Engineering, University Carlos III of Madrid, Avenida de la Universidad 30, Leganés, 28911 Madrid, Spain

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: Climate change and the increase of the consumption of energy resources are expected to further strain anticipated water stress scenarios. The operation of existing thermal plants depends greatly on their cooling capacity, for which large amounts of water are withdrawn and consumed. Dry-cooling systems, on the other hand, do not require water, but they are less efficient and more expensive relative to conventional water-based systems, because of their dependency on the ambient temperature. This paper introduces the new idea of replacing water-based cooling systems in thermal power plants with earth-cooling air tunnels. Based on the concept of existing earth-air heat exchangers, the system takes advantage of the low and relatively constant underground temperature for cooling ambient air before it is introduced in the air condenser of the plant. In this work, we present an initial design of such an open-loop system for a 20 MW concentrated solar power plant. A sensitivity study of both geometric and flow parameters is realized using computational fluid dynamics simulations. Under the requirements of the study, we find that a system using a design of pipes with 0.5 m diameter and about 300 m length can be considered a technically viable zero-water alternative to water-cooling technologies.

Keywords: cooling systems; air-cooling systems; power plants; climate change; zero water use; water scarcity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/4/797/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/4/797/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:4:p:797-:d:319547

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().