Getting the condenser at a lower pressure is a reasonable way to increase power plant power capacity. But, sometimes any effort to build the desired condenser pressure has to be constrained by the temperature of the cooling water.

The condenser temperature regulates the lowest pressure that can be applied to the condenser, not counting the presence of non-condensable gases from geothermal fluids. In some cases, the preferred condenser pressure is not achievable due to the environmental factor i.e. high ambient temperatures in tropical countries. Hence, the environment cannot serve plant systems with such a low temperature of cooling water. Based on this fact, an artificial cooling system such as an absorption refrigeration system could be built in order to produce the preferred temperature of the cooling water. Here, the single effect absorption refrigeration system takes it place by lowering the cooling water from the cooling tower just before it enters the condenser.

Two absorption refrigeration technologies, lithium bromide-water pairs and water-ammonia pairs are compared and combined with three types of geothermal power plant cycles. Several combinations of temperature differences between the inlet and the outlet of an ARS evaporator and the evaporator’s temperature were simulated to determine the optimum combination for the given geothermal heat source. Other parameters, for example the weak-strong solution concentration difference, were also selected so that the ARS would work in high refrigeration efficiency with the least heat exchanger area.

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