The conventional steam power plant working under the Rankine Cycle and the steam condenser as a heat sink and the steam boiler as a heat source have the same importance for the power plant operating process. Energy efficiency of the coal fired power plant strongly depends on its turbine-condenser system operation mode. For the given thermal power plant configuration, cooling water temperature or/and flow rate change generate alterations in the condenser pressure. Those changes have great influence on the energy efficiency of the plant. This paper focuses on the influence of the cooling water temperature and flow rate on the condenser performance, and thus on the specific heat rate of the coal fired plant and its energy efficiency. Reference plant is working under turbine-follow mode with an open cycle cooling system. Analysis is done using thermodynamic theory, in order to define heat load dependence on the cooling water temperature and flow rate. Having these correlations, for given cooling water temperature it is possible to determine optimal flow rate of the cooling water in order to achieve an optimal condensing pressure, and thus, optimal energy efficiency of the plant. Obtained results could be used as useful guidelines in improving existing power plants performances and also in design of the new power plants.

The paper presents a theoretical analysis of the cooling system of a 110 MW coal-fired power plant located in central Serbia, where eight evaporative towers cool down the plant. An updated research on the evaporative tower cooling system has been carried out to show the theoretical analysis of the tower heat and mass balance, taking into account the sensible and latent heat exchanged during the processes which occur inside these towers. Power plants which are using wet cooling towers for cooling condenser cooling water have higher design temperature of cooling water, thus the designed condensing pressure is higher compared to plants with a once-through cooling system. Daily and seasonal changes further deteriorate energy efficiency of these plants, so it can be concluded that these plants have up to 5% less efficiency compared to systems with once-through cooling. The whole analysis permitted to evaluate the optimal conditions, as far as the operation of the towers is concerned, and to suggest an improvement of the plant. Since plant energy efficiency improvement has become a quite common issue today, the evaluation of the cooling system operation was conducted under the hypothesis of an increase in the plant overall energy efficiency due to low cost improvement in cooling tower system

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