How to use seawater temperature difference to generate electricity

Seawater temperature difference power generation technology replaces thermal power generation, wind power generation and photovoltaic solar energy technology. Wind power and photovoltaic solar energy provide intermittent electric energy, which has great influence on the stable operation of power grid. It also requires traditional energy sources to perform peak shaving when connected to the power grid.

technical characteristics

Brand-new technology was adopted in the manufacture of seawater thermoelectric power generation equipment, which solved the problems of corrosiveness and high energy consumption in seawater extraction and huge volume of heat exchanger, cancelled the working medium reflux pump, reduced the energy consumption of the equipment itself, increased the energy output, and adopted brand-new technology in the steam turbine, which made the mechanism more efficient, smaller in size and minimized the manufacturing cost and technical difficulty.

technological disparity

The working cycle mode of seawater temperature difference power generation equipment: the liquid low boiling point working medium is heated and vaporized to generate high-pressure steam which impacts the turbine to generate electricity, and then cooled and liquefied by a cold source. However, the step of pumping the liquid chemicals to the original heating place is cancelled (the seawater temperature difference power generation technology in the United States, Japan and China now has this step, which consumes most of the electric energy generated by the steam turbine (60-70%, which is related to the nature of the working medium), making the whole unit unable to generate redundant electric energy.

Under the temperature difference of 20 degrees, the volume of cryogenic working medium can only expand about 3 times in saturated state, which is equivalent to 1 volume expanding to 3 volumes to generate 3N energy. If the efficiency of the steam turbine is 80% and the output energy of the steam turbine is 2.4N, the expanded working medium will be cooled to the original volume of 1, and the energy of 1N will be consumed by the working medium pump to pump back the heater. If the efficiency of the pump is 66%, the pump will consume about 1.5n, so the unit can only output 2.4n-1.5n = 0.9n. Together with the energy consumed by pumping cold and hot seawater, the energy output of the whole unit is very small and has no commercial value at all. This is the reason why the seawater temperature difference power generation currently being studied in the United States and Japan cannot be commercialized.