PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF OCEAN THERMAL ENERGY CONVERSION SYSTEM

Abstract

Renewable energy sources and technologies have potential to provide solutions to the longstanding traditional energy problems being faced by the developing countries like India. Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) technology uses the temperature difference between the warm surface water and deep cold ocean water to operate a heat engine to generate electricity. An experimental and theoretical study shall be carried out on a newly designed closed cycle OTEC plant with the help of temperature and pressure measurements before and after each component. An increase in the warm water temperature increases the heat transfer between the warm water and the working fluid, thus increasing the working fluid temperature, pressure, and enthalpy before the turbine. The performance is better at larger flow rates of the working fluid and the warm water. It is found that the thermal efficiency and the power output of the system both increase with increasing operating temperature difference (difference between warm and cold water inlet temperature). Increasing turbine inlet temperatures also increase the efficiency and the work done by the turbine. The efficiency and the power output increase with increasing ratio of warm water to cold water flow rates. The findings from this work can contribute to the development of OTEC technologies. In this study the effects of the temperature and flow rate of cold seawater on the net output of an OTEC plant. Parameters of turbine dimension, seawater depth, flow rate of working fluid and the flow rate of seawater are considered. In this study we consider the different working fluid and then calculate output for particular fluid. It shows that a maximum output of the network exists at a certain flow rate of cooling seawater. The output work is higher for a larger ratio of warm to cold seawater flow rate. For a lower cold seawater temperature, the maximum net output and the corresponding required flow rate of cold seawater becomes larger. The pipe diameters corresponding to maximum net output increase with decreasing cold seawater temperature for fixed flow velocity in pipes. In addition, a larger maximum net output can be obtained by employing a higher temperature of the surface warm seawater.