Improving the efficiency of thermal power plant using thermoelectric material

The efficiency of thermal power plants is rather poor. In the power plants, before starting a new cycle, the steam which is used to spin the turbine in the last cycle has to be condensed to water at first and then reheated to change into steam again. This process is an important thermodynamic rule and needed for an efficient heat to electricity conversion cycle in the power plants, so, in addition to mechanical and heat transfer losses, large amounts of fuel energy is wasted during condensation and rejected to the atmosphere. In the presented paper, we decide to convert some of the condenser wasted energy to electricity using thermoelectric material. At first, the cycle occurring in thermal power plants in which the electricity is generated from the fuel heat, is explained. Then, the two condenser types and their performance mechanism are declared. After selecting appropriate thermoelectric material and presenting its characteristic and also equations, a thermoelectric generator is designed to use as the condenser of a 2000MW thermal power plant. It's shown that about 3.3% increasing in the power plant efficiency is expected by using the selected thermoelectric generator in the condensation cycle.