On the water footprint in power production: Sustainable design of wet cooling towers

Lidia S. Guerras and Mariano Martín

Applied Energy, 2020, vol. 263, issue C, No S030626192030132X

Abstract: Renewable based power plants must be installed where the main resource is available. The weather affects the design and the water footprint of these plants. Two types of power cycles, a regenerative Rankine cycle, representing biomass and solar thermal plants, and the combined cycle, corresponding to biogas or gasification based processes, are studied. The facilities are modeled unit by unit in detail to compute the cycle yield, the condenser duty, the water consumption and the natural draft wet cooling tower geometry for its sustainable design. Hot regions, appropriate for solar facilities, and humid regions require larger and more expensive towers. Areas with high solar availability also show larger consumption of water presenting a tradeoff for a future renewable based power system. In addition, design guidelines and surrogate models to estimate water consumption, cooling tower size and its cost as a function of the climate have also been developed. The surrogates are useful for the analysis on the water footprint of a renewable based power system that substitutes the fossil based one.

Keywords: Cooling towers; Natural draft; Water consumption; Water – energy nexus; Cost estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.114620

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