Comparative Analysis of Thermodynamic Cycles of Selected Nuclear Ship Power Plants With High-Temperature Helium-Cooled Nuclear Reactor

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of thermodynamic cycles of two ship power plant systems with a high-temperature helium-cooled nuclear reactor. The first of them is a gas system with recuperator, in which classical gas chamber is substituted for a HTGR reactor (High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor). The second of the considered cycles is a combined gas-steam system where working medium flux from gas turbine outlet is directed into waste heat boiler and its heat is utilized for production of superheated steam to drive steam turbine. Preliminary calculations of the combine cycles showed that it is necessary to expand the system by adding to its steam part an inter-stage overheat for secondary steam, owing to that a required degree of steam dryness at outlet from the turbine can be reached, ensuring its correct operational conditions. The analyzed power systems were compared to each other with regard to efficiency of their thermodynamic cycles. Also, efficiency of particular cycles were subjected to optimization in respect to such parameters as : working gas temperature at outlet from reactor in gas system as well as steam pressure at outlet from waste heat boiler and partition pressure in steam part of combined system. Advantages of nuclear power plants compared with the classical power systems dominating currently in sea transport were also discussed.

Estimation of gas turbine shaft torque and fuel flow of a CODLAG propulsion system using genetic programming algorithm

“…When tournament size values compared in those three cases it can be noticed that the lowest tournament size value was in the case of first symbolic expression (8) while in remaining two cases this value was much higher (20 and 23). The range of maximum tree sizes used for creation of initial population were (5,8), (3,12) and (5,7). From these values it can be noticed that the highest range and the highest maximum tree depth number was in the second case from 3 to 12.…”

“…The marine propulsion systems are used to generate thrust to move ship or boat across water. Modern ships today are propelled by different power sources such as steam turbines [5][6][7][8][9][10] (nuclear-powered steam turbines [11,12]), turbo-electric transmission [13], diesel [14,15], and reciprocating diesel engines [16], LNG engines [17], gas turbines [18], Stirling engines [19,20], etc. Many warships at the beginning of the second half of the last century have used gas turbines for propulsion.…”

Example of Using Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm with Nelder–Mead Method for Flow Improvement in Axial Last Stage of Gas–Steam Turbine

“…Recent studies have explored various strategies to optimize the efficiency of these turbines, focusing on aspects such as thermal integration [2], design parameters [3], and device modeling [4]. Steam turbines, often considered an 'old technology', continue to be an area of extensive research and development, targeting improvements in their efficiency, their operational flexibility [5], and their range of applicability [6]. These turbines are not just restricted to traditional power plant setups but are also being tailored to novel concepts of power plants, such as solar power plants [7], carbon capture [8][9][10], storage technologies [11], oxy-fuel technology [12,13], waste-to-energy plants [14,15], nuclear power systems [16], ORC [17,18], and electricity/hydrogen/synfuel polygeneration plants [19].…”

Review of Methods for Diagnosing the Degradation Process in Power Units Cooperating with Renewable Energy Sources Using Artificial Intelligence

“…As a result, the Paris Agreement [14] was created, the main goal of which is to prevent global warming [15,16]. Thus, power plants producing energy must operate at the highest possible and constant efficiency [17,18], taking into account green energy production [19] from nonstable wind and photovoltaic farms [20]. To achieve this, an appropriate diagnostic system is necessary [21], which will not only reveal failures [22,23] but also enable a high level of efficiency to be maintained when changing power [24,25].…”