Exergy-based performance evaluation of the thermal power plants in Bangladesh for in-depth understanding and future recommendations

Exergy analysis is based on the second law of thermodynamics and is a complementary way to investigate power plants performance compared to sole energy-based evaluation. Considering five renowned thermal power plants from Bangladesh, this work investigates power plants energy production data from last 05 cycle years to identify plants efficiency and sustainability, together with corresponding suggestions for improvement. Exergetic parameters such as depletion number, exergy sustainability index, relative irreversibility, lack of production, waste exergy ratio, environmental effect factor, improvement potential, and environmental exergy loss are also investigated. Those values pointed to the plants planning and maintenance performed over the years. Highest overall energy and exergy efficiencies found in FY 2018-2019 which is 151.65% and 150.1%. In that case most efficient two power plants are APSCL and BPP’s efficiency varies between 37%-50.04% and 24.24%-31.57% respectively. Depletion Number which indicates fuel depleted rate and it varies between 62%-49% and 75%-68% for APSCL and BPP respectively. Evaluating all the parameters this work proposed a data-driven recommendation to achieve efficient, sustainable, and environment-friendly power generation in Bangladesh.