A Diagnosis Procedure for Energy Conversion Plants; Part I: Description of the Method

In order to achieve the “best” use of energetic and economic resources, not only the design of a power plant has to be “optimized”, but also its operation and management according to users demand and boundary conditions. So, the availability of procedures and tools able to perform diagnosis activities is important in both locating the causes of malfunctions and evaluating their influence on the plant performances. The Part I of this paper presents a diagnosis method, whose target is to evaluate the deviations of the plant performances from “reference values”, identify their causes and quantify their influence. The method is based on the exergetic and the exergoeconomic analyses and supplies some indicators of performance related to energetic and economic aspects; the use of these indicators helps the analyst plan proper operation or maintenance actions. Part II of the paper will discuss the results obtained by checking the actual operation of some power and cogenerative plants.