Advancing sustainable thermal power generation: insights from recent energy and exergy studies

Thermal power plants are pivotal in meeting global energy demands, yet enhancing their efficiency and sustainability remains an enduring challenge. While previous studies have scrutinized energy and exergy analyses of distinct plant components, there's a scarcity of comprehensive reviews integrating findings across diverse plant types. This paper bridges this gap by presenting a comprehensive synthesis of recent advancements in energy and exergy studies across coal, gas, biomass, oil, and combined cycle plants. The review focuses on critical aspects: optimizing operations through modeling and advanced controls, economic evaluations encompassing costs and revenue, and assessing environmental impacts such as emissions and water use. Achieving a balance between performance, cost-effectiveness, and environmental responsibility is crucial for sustainable thermal power generation worldwide. It requires an integrated approach that considers technical, economic, and environmental factors to ensure efficiency, profitability, and minimal adverse effects on health and climate. Key findings emphasize that, in most cases, the boiler emerges as the primary source of exergy destruction, accounting for over 50% of losses across varied plant configurations. Turbines and condensers also significantly contribute to energy losses. Supercritical and ultra-supercritical power plants exhibit higher efficiencies compared to subcritical counterparts. Integrating waste-to-energy technologies with coal plants holds promise, offering efficiency improvements and reduced environmental impact. Optimizing parameters such as pressure and temperature, along with component advancements, shows potential in curbing losses. These optimization endeavors have showcased a notable up to 6% enhancement in exergy efficiency. This review underscores the critical role of ongoing thermodynamic modeling and assessments in steering towards more sustainable thermal power generation. In summary, this paper delivers valuable insights into performance benchmarks and delineates effective strategies for augmenting thermal power plant efficiency through exhaustive energy and exergy analyses.