Thermodynamics: Final Paper
In today’s economic world, energy is vital for the running of not only industries, but also powering homes, offices and different means of transport. While there are numerous sources of energy, priority is always set to get the most reliable and efficient source of energy to power homes, industries, offices and other sectors. According to Gorostiaga et al. (2010), efficiency is the ratio of the valuable work done by a machine in a certain process to the total energy spent during the process. Settling on an efficient system is a daunting process that most companies have to deal with. Various factors such as the type of energy and sustainability have to be considered in the determination process (Gorostiaga et al., 2010). Whilst efficiency is the sole factor to the success of any power plant, there is need to consider the best technology and keeping the energy losses at a minimum level throughout the energy conversion process to realize maximum value of the system; by incorporating modern turbine designs, supercritical and ultra-critical technologies, modern heat exchangers, adopting the Rankine cycle in the boiler, and using alloys and better materials in the different components of the system, the power plant can save on operation costs and reduce environmental pollution.
General Energy Conversion Processes
Different companies employ various conversion devices based on the output they require. There are systems designed to produce heat while other are designed to generate electricity. This paper shall primarily focus on
the energy conversion process that ultimately produces electricity. First, the chemical energy from the energy source whether coal, nuclear, oil or gas is converted to thermal energy in the subsystem A as schematically represented in figure 1. Subsystem A is the boiler. The content of the boiler which is typically water is heated by coal to produce thermal energy in the form of steam. The thermal energy within the steam is converted to mechanical energy by the turbines by Subsystem B. In the final process, the mechanical energy by the high speed turning energies are converted by the generator. The generator is represented by sub-system C in figure 1.
Figure 1:
Schematic representation of energy conversion in an electric power plant. For this research, E shall represent efficiency. From the representation in Figure 1, therefore, the efficiency of the power plant can be calculated by:
E power plant = [E boiler] [E turbine] [E generator]. The [E boiler] is the result of dividing thermal energy by chemical energy. [E turbine] is the result of dividing mechanical energy and thermal energy. [E generator] on
the other hand is the result of dividing the electrical energy and the chemical energy. From the formula, the efficiency of the power plant is equal to …
