SECOND LAW ANALYSIS OF SUPER CRITICAL POWER PLANT USING ENTROPY GENERATION METHOD

Abstract

A power plant is defined as the assembly of equipment that generates a flow of mechanical or electrical energy (Raja et al., 2006). The equipment used is known as the generator. Power plants are generally classified into two types: conventional power plants and non-conventional power plants, and they are classified based on the electricity generation devices and fuel type (Kitto, 1996).Power plants classified regarding the electricity generation devices such as turbines are called conventional power plants. Examples of conventional sources of energy include coal, natural gas, petroleum, and water power. The device that drives electricity generation determines the kind of power plant. For instance, steam turbine plants use the dynamic pressure generated by expanding steam to run the blades of a turbine. Some other kinds of the conventional power plants are: gas turbine plants, combined cycle plants, internal combustion plants, pulverized coal-fired power plants, circulating fluidized bed power plants, pressurized fluidized bed power plants, integrated gasification cycle power plants, hydro-electric power plants, nuclear power plants, diesel power plants, steam turbines, and steam engines (Michael et al., 2011). Among the above different kinds of power plants, steam turbines, steam engines, diesel power plants, and nuclear power plants are categorized as the thermal power plants because they convert heat into the electric energy. Power Plants that are classified based on fuel type are called non-conventional power plants. Some of the fuels used are biomass, solar, biogas, wind, tidal, and geothermal. Some examples of the power plants are thermo-electric generator, fuel cell power plants, photovoltaic solar cell power systems, fusion reactors, geothermal energy, plants, wind energy power systems, tidal wave plants, and biogas and biomass energy power system.