Retrofit Of Steam Power Plant Using Solar Dish Collectors and Multi-Effect Desalination Cycle (Exergy and Economic Analysis)

Regarding the water and energy crisis, improving the efficiency of thermal systems and heat recovery, along with the use of desalination process, has attracted the attention of many researchers in recent years. For this purpose, thermal desalination process and solar collectors were used in steam power plants. In this study, an integrated structure for simultaneous generation of fresh water and power has been developed using a combination of solar collectors, steam power plant for power generation, ORC cycle, and thermal multi-effect desalination cycle. The integrated structure has the capacity of producing 762.6 kg / s of fresh water, 104.1 MW of power in the rankine cycle and 306.7 MW of power in a steam power plant. In this integrated structure, the efficiency of the steam power plant is 37.24% and the total exergy efficiency is 78.54%. Exergy analysis of the integrated structure shows that the highest destruction of exergy in solar collectors and heat exchangers are equal to 45.2% and 37.27%, respectively. The economic analysis of the developed integrated structure shows that the period of return is 3.838 years, and the prime cost of the product is 0.0325 $/kWh. Moreover, the impact of various parameters on the performance of the integrated structure was investigated using sensitivity analysis.