Search results

Recent developments in the electricity generation sector of Nigeria necessitated the re-assessment of its contribution to air emission level in the country as information provided by previous inventory is nearly out-of-date. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions generated from existing thermal power plants in the country.

Thermal power plants in Nigeria and their installed capacities were identified, and estimation of CO₂ emission from each of the plants was carried out using the emission factor method. In addition to the direct emissions generated through the combustion operation of the power plants, indirect emissions resulting from upstream activities such as extraction, production, and transportation of fuels consumed by the thermal power plant was determined using the same method.

In total, 40 thermal power plants are currently operational in Nigeria. Additional 18 thermal plants are at different stages of completion. The operational thermal plants have average generation output of 40 percent of their installed capacity and produce 87.3 million metric tonne (mmt)/annum CO₂ emissions. In total, 66.9 percent of the estimated emissions are direct emissions, i.e. fuel combustion emissions; the rest are indirect emissions. Additional 67.9 mmt was estimated as expected overall emissions from the thermal power plants under construction. Considering the global warming potential of CO₂, proactive measures must be taken to regulate its emissions from the country’s thermal power plants.

This paper bridged the information gap existing in the emission inventory from the Nigeria electricity sector by providing up-to-date data on the contribution of the sector to greenhouse gas emission level in the country.

The purpose of this paper is to measure technical efficiency of Indian thermal power sector employing the recent by-production approach.

The by-production approach is used in conjunction with data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) of India to compute the output-based Färe, Grosskopf, Lovell (FGL) efficiency index and its decomposition into productive and environmental efficiency indexes for the ITPPs

The authors show that given the aggregated nature of data on coal reported by CEA, CEA’s computation of CO₂ emissions through a deterministic linear formula that does not distinguish between different coal types and the tiny share of oil in coal-based power plants, the computed output-based environmental efficiency indexes are no longer informative. Meaningful measurement of environmental efficiency using CEA data is possible only along the dimension of the coal input. Productive efficiency is positively associated with the engineering concept of thermodynamic/energy efficiency and is also high for power plants with high operating availabilities reflecting better management and O&M practices. Both these factors are high for private and centrally owned as opposed to state-owned power-generating companies. The example of Sipat demonstrates the importance of (ultra)supercritical technologies in increasing productive and thermodynamic efficiencies of the ITPPs, while also reducing CO₂ emitted per unit of the net electricity generated.

This paper uses the by-production approach for the first time to measure technical efficiency of ITPPs and highlights how the nature of the Indian data impacts on efficiency measurement.

Energy security is a major concern for India and many rural areas remain un-electrified. Thus, innovations in sustainable technologies to provide energy services are required. Biomass and solar energy in particular are resources that are widely available and underutilised in India. This paper aims to provide an overview of a methodology that was developed for designing and assessing the feasibility of a hybrid solar-biomass power plant in Gujarat.

The methodology described is a combination of engineering and business management studies used to evaluate and design solar thermal collectors for specific applications and locations. For the scenario of a hybrid plant, the methodology involved: the analytical hierarchy process, for solar thermal technology selection; a cost-exergy approach, for design optimisation; quality function deployment, for designing and evaluating a novel collector – termed the elevation linear Fresnel reflector (ELFR); and case study simulations, for analysing alternative hybrid plant configurations.

The paper recommended that for a hybrid plant in Gujarat, a linear Fresnel reflector of 14,000 m2 aperture is integrated with a 3 tonne per hour biomass boiler, generating 815 MWh per annum of electricity for nearby villages and 12,450 tonnes of ice per annum for local fisheries and food industries. However, at the expense of a 0.3 ¢/kWh increase in levelised energy costs, the ELFR can increase savings of biomass (100 t/a) and land (9 ha/a).

The research reviewed in this paper is primarily theoretical and further work will need to be undertaken to specify plant details such as piping layout, pump sizing and structure, and assess plant performance during real operational conditions.

The paper considers the methodology adopted proved to be a powerful tool for integrating technology selection, optimisation, design and evaluation and promotes interdisciplinary methods for improving sustainable engineering design and energy management.

Integrated solar combined cycle (ISCC) using parabolic trough collector (PTC) technology is a new power plant that has been installed in few countries to benefit from the use of hybrid solar-gas systems. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the challenges in modeling the thermal output of the hybrid solar-gas power plant and to analyze the factors that influence them.

To validate the proposal, a study was conducted on a test stand in situ and based on the statistical analysis of meteorological data of the year 2017. Such data have been brought from Abener hybrid solar-gas central of Hassi R’mel and used as an input of our model.

The proposal made by the authors has been simulated using MATLAB environment. The simulation results show that the net solar electricity reaches 18 per cent in June, 15 per cent in March and September, while it cannot exceed 8 per cent in December. Moreover, it shows that the power plant responses sensibly to solar energy, where the electricity output increases accordingly to the solar radiation increase. This increase in efficiency results in better economic utilization of the solar PTC equipment in such kind of hybrid solar-gas power plant.

The obtained results would be expected to provide the possibility for designing other power plants in Algeria when such conditions are met (high DNI, low wind speed, water and natural-gas availability).

This paper presents a new model able to predict the thermal solar energy and the net solar-electricity efficiency of such kind solar hybrid power plant.

This paper aims to measure Chinese regional thermal industries’ evolution.

This paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) and global Malmquist–Luenberger productivity (GMLP) index.

The results reveal that the development of Chinese thermal power industry varies significantly in different regions, and it is highly correlated with the level of local economic development. Although the change of technical efficiency and scale efficiency had different impacts on different regions from year to year, the overall GMLP index change shows a close relationship with the contemporaneous frontier shift.

The results indicate that the Chinese Government should make efforts to promote its policy implementations and regulations in thermal industries so that the contemporaneous frontier will shift toward the global technology frontier with more desirable outputs and less undesirable outputs.

As an application, this study uses DEA and GMLP index to measure the productivity of Chinese thermal industries in 30 Chinese provinces from 2006 to 2013. The results have the meaningful policy implications for decision makers in charge of Chinese thermal industries.

The purpose of the paper is to quantify the external cost of airborne pollutants (i.e. sulphur and nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide, and particulate matters) generated during electricity production in the thermal power plants in Greece.

This paper applies the EcoSenseLE online tool to examine the external cost of air pollution generated in all thermal power stations of 50 MW or higher capacity in Greece. The external cost has been calculated for five damage categories and by fuel types. Data for 2004 has been used and projections up to 2030 have been made.

This research finds that the external cost of the natural gas power plants is €13.87 per MWh which is the lowest for the system while the cost is estimated at €43.89 per MWh for lignite plants. The external cost of air pollution from the power sector in 2004 has been estimated at €1.89 billion and is expected to increase to €2.48 billion in 2025. The marginal external cost at the plant level varies from €8.76 to 93.15 per MWh. This variation is due to the quality of fuel, and the technology of plants.

The general limitation of the external cost methodology applies to this work as it uses the standard method developed for the ExternE project. Similarly, the data limitations as well as assumptions related to the costs and exclusions/omissions of cost elements affect the results.

The estimation of external costs is important for decision makers in the electricity sector to develop strategies for emission reduction and to develop environmental and energy policies.

The contribution of the paper lies in its use of recent data for the estimation and projection of the external costs until 2030. This allows an understanding of the changes in the external costs from power generation in the country.

Long-term contract is an important developing direction of China's coal industry coordination. This paper aims to discuss how to use contract for difference (CFD) to avoid risk and effectively increase the benefit of both coal and thermal power plants in the coal-electricity supply chain.

Based on prospect theory, this paper takes the risks and benefits of the coal and coal-fired power plants in the coal supply chain under CFD into balanced consideration to construct the contract coordination mechanism. In this mechanism, the coal demand in the coal supply chain equilibrium under centralized decision-making is regarded as the total annual volume of transactions needed to design the contract coordination mechanism and solve double marginalization. Then, based on prospect theory, in the construction of CFD, this paper takes the income of power and coal enterprises when they are in equilibrium under Stackelberg non-cooperative game as the reference point. In addition, considering that coal demand is a random variable, the CFD with a one-year trading session can be designed.

The research derives the coal price of the contract for difference, contract trading volume and its proportion of the total trading volume. A numerical example shows that the model above can be used to effectively avoid the risk of both coal and electricity sides.

To solve the conflict between coal enterprises and thermal power plants, let the coal-electricity supply chain be converted from non-cooperative game to cooperative game. Based on the prospect theory, this paper takes the income of the non-cooperative game of coal and thermal power plants as a reference point and considers how to design the coordination mechanism, the contract for difference, so as to make the two parties cooperate to solve the double marginal utility of the non-cooperative game in a chain supply. The main innovation of the work lies in the following: first, the coal demand when the coal-electrical supply chain is in balance under centralized decision-making is taken as the total annual trading volume needed to design the contract coordination mechanism and solve double marginalization. Second, based on prospect theory, in the construction of CFD, the benefits of coal-fired power plants and coal enterprises when both sides are in equilibrium under the Stackelberg non-cooperative game are taken as the reference points, and coal demand is taken as a random variable to design the CFD with a one-year transaction period. The price of coal that is not traded through CFD is calculated according to the daily market price. Third, this paper proposes the prospect M-V criterion of the risk-benefit equilibrium of both power and coal enterprises, which means that the risk-benefit equilibrium of both sides is the prospect variance effect of both sides relative to the reference point benefit divided by the prospect expectation effect.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the feasibility of an ideal power network that combines many different renewable energy technologies such as wind power, concentrated solar power (CSP) and hydroelectric power. This paper emphasizes in finding the benefits arising from hydrothermal coordination compared to the non-regulated integration of the hydroelectric units, as well as the benefits from the integration of wind power and CSP.

Artificial Neural Networks were used to estimate wind power output. As for the CSP system, a three-tier architecture which includes a solar field, a transmission-storage system and a production unit was used. Each one of those separate sections is analyzed and the process is modeled. As for the hydroelectric plant, the knowledge of the water’s flow rated has helped estimating the power output, taking into account the technical restrictions and losses during transmission. Also, the economic dispatch problem was solved by using artificial intelligence methods.

Hydrothermal coordination leads to greater thermal participation reduction and cost reduction than a non-regulated integration of the hydrothermal unit. The latter is independent from the degree of integration of the other renewable sources (wind power, CSP).

Hydrothermal coordination in a power system which includes thermal units and CSP for cost and emissions reduction.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the overall flow and temperature field of the air in the whole power plant, especially around the air‐cooled heat exchanger (ACHE) to evaluate the feasibility of the thermal plant project.

The commercial computational fluid dynamics code FLUENT with standard k‐ε turbulent model was used. The buoyancy of the air was also considered.

It is concluded that plume recirculation occurs in each case due to the wind effect and the suction of the fan. Installing a side board below or above the fan platform (side board I or side board II) is an effective method of avoiding the plume recirculation and, the higher the board, the better the effect. When the height of the side board I H1≥10 m or the height of the side board II H2≥12 m, the temperature distributions of the fan platform will be sufficient to meet the requirement.

A proper distance between the adjacent high buildings and the ACHE should be found with further investigation.

The paper presents a very useful numerical method for the prediction of the flow and temperature field around ACHE or in a large space.

The paper provides the numerical simulation of the flow and heat transfer inside the whole thermal power plant. Suggestions which can effectively avoid the unfavorable influence and ensure the whole system in safe conditions are offered. The study gives some useful information to the design of a thermal power plant with an ACHE system.