Publisher: Applied Thermal Engineering (Elsevier)
Source title: Energy‑saving retrofit and thermal economy optimization of peak‑shaving for coal‑fired power plants utilizing molten salt thermal storage
Authors: Qilong Xu; Shuai Wang; Kun Luo; Jianren Fan
Intro-summary
The paper optimizes a molten‑salt TES peak‑shaving retrofit for a 600 MW supercritical CFPP by coupling an integrated MSTES model with two energy‑saving devices: a No. 0 high‑pressure heater (HPH) and a front steam cooler (FSC).
The strategy addresses the usual trade‑off between deeper peak shaving and higher coal consumption by recovering exhaust heat to salt at low load and enabling faster heat release at peaks. Results show boiler efficiency rises ~0.60% when the FSC reduces No. 3 exhaust steam superheat from 210–240 °C; net peak‑shaving depth reaches ~9.5% at 40% turbine heat acceptance, while net coal consumption rate drops by ~1.2–1.9 g/kWh. A thermo‑economic mechanism at ~6 MPa is identified to set optimal extraction pressure for charge/discharge.