Study of Power Generation System Based on Black Smokers

Abstract

The OTEC system of the paper studying is different with the traditional OTEC system, which takes the marine geothermal energy (black smokers) as the heat source, takes cold seawater of deep sea as the cold source. The paper analyzes and calculates some parameters of open-circle system which uses water vapor as the working fluid and the closed-circle system which uses pure ammonia as the working fluid, those parameters include thermal efficiency, heat load of condenser and evaporator, pump power consumption, and the net power output. The results show that: with the closed-circle system which uses pure ammonia as the working fluid, the large power consumption of hot water pump is the biggest problem for the open-circle system, besides reducing the temperature of hot fluid and increasing the flash pressure are disadvantageous for open-circle system; but water vapor as the working fluid helps to reduce the load of condenser and evaporator, which is very advantageous for heat exchanger design.