Performance assessment of nuclear and desalination cogeneration plants

Thermodynamic evaluation of a nuclear desalination plant by coupling a pressurized water reactor and a multi-effect distillation system was performed by using a new version of Desalination Thermodynamic Optimization Program. To energy management of nuclear desalination plant, all possible coupling configurations between the nuclear power plant and the desalination process were investigated. The software was also upgraded to study exergy analysis by adding related exergy equations. Several important output parameters, such as power loss ratio, net efficiency, thermal utilization, and total power requirement, were compared; these parameters varied from 8.7% to 28.5%, 32.6% to 33.3%, 36.1% to 36.9%, and 14.7 MWe to 35.3 MWe, respectively. The minimum power loss ratio, and the maximum net efficiency and thermal utilization are obtained from multi-extraction points, which included the heat rejected by the condenser. Exergy analysis showed that the maximum exergy destructions (1292.9 MWth) were related to the reactor core which is considered as the main irreversible component. The results demonstrated good agreement with previous theoretical and experimental studies.