Life cycle assessment of novel heat exchanger for dry cooling of power plants based on encapsulated phase change materials

Zhang, Lige; Spatari, Sabrina; Sun, Ying

doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115227

Title: Life cycle assessment of novel heat exchanger for dry cooling of power plants based on encapsulated phase change materials

Journal Article · Tue May 26 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Applied Energy

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115227· OSTI ID:1799023

Zhang, Lige ^[1]; Spatari, Sabrina ^[2]; Sun, Ying ^[1]

Drexel Univ., Philadelphia, PA (United States)
Drexel Univ., Philadelphia, PA (United States); Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa (Israel)

Cooling systems in power plants account for approximately 40% of total freshwater withdrawals in the U.S. Due to dwindling access to freshwater resources worldwide, continued operation of wet cooling systems poses a significant engineering challenge. To reduce water consumption, a novel air-cooled heat exchanger has been developed using encapsulated phase change material (EPCM) for dry cooling of power plants. Compared to traditional finned-tube air-cooled condensers, this novel EPCM heat exchanger improves the heat transfer coefficient and power plant efficiency while reducing the pressure drop and cooling system cost. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and techno-economic analysis (TEA) are used to evaluate the environmental and economic performance of EPCM heat exchangers from cradle-to-grave and to compare them to wet cooling and traditional air-cooled condensers. A thermodynamic model is developed to predict the EPCM heat exchanger performance for plant-scale operations. Equipment and construction costs for heat exchangers are estimated based on design parameters obtained from the thermodynamic model. Both process-LCA and economic-input–output LCA are used to simulate and test the sensitivity of EPCM alternatives with commercial wet and dry cooling technologies. We investigate options for EPCM end-of-life management upon retiring the heat exchanger and construct a process-based LCA model to estimate a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions credit for recycling the EPCM. The life cycle GHG emission of the novel dry cooling technology is 1.16 kg CO_{2 eq.}/MWh compared with the 1.1–4.3 kg CO_{2 eq.}/MWh reported for commercial dry cooling technologies and consumes 9.5 L/MWh_e of water for cradle-to-gate life cycle, which is significantly lower than that of wet cooling systems. The TEA shows many advantages of EPCM cooling technology over the state-of-art dry cooling solutions. Overall, the EPCM heat exchanger provides a better alternative compared to existing dry cooling and wet cooling technologies.

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Research Organization:: Electric Power Research Inst. (EPRI), Palo Alto, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)

Grant/Contract Number:: AR0000572

OSTI ID:: 1799023

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1631462

Journal Information:: Applied Energy, Vol. 271; ISSN 0306-2619

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 7 works

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32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
power plant cooling
dry cooling technology
phase change materials
life cycle analysis
techno-economic analysis
water-energy nexus

Title: Life cycle assessment of novel heat exchanger for dry cooling of power plants based on encapsulated phase change materials

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