ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Energy Res.
Sec. Energy Efficiency
Research on Operational Flexibility and Energy Consumption Characteristics of Cogeneration Considering Primary Network Heat Transfer Constraints
Provisionally accepted
- 1CHN ENERGY ZHEJIANG BEILUN POWER GENERATION CO.LTD, Ningbo, China
- 2Guoneng Nanjing Electric Power Test & Research Limited, Nanjing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
High back pressure cogeneration units demonstrate superior energy utilization efficiency, but their operation is significantly influenced by primary network water temperature and flow rate. The analysis of operational flexibility and energy consumption characteristics must consider the heat transfer performance constraints of the primary thermal network. This study investigates a high back pressure heating unit with steam extraction through off-design performance calculations of its condenser using the efficiency-number of transfer units (ε-NTU) method. The research evaluates how air-cooled island flow rate, thermal network return water flow, and temperature parameters affect the heat allocation ratio between steam extraction and high back pressure heating, as well as overall energy consumption characteristics. Key findings reveal that under maximum steam extraction heat load conditions, the coal consumption rate decreases by approximately 0.1 g/(kW·h) with a corresponding 0.43% improvement in energy efficiency. These insights provide operational guidance for optimizing combined high back pressure and steam extraction units through refined control strategies.
Keywords: High back pressure unit, Primary network, waste heat recovery, Efficiency-number of transfer units method, off-design condition
Received: 03 Jul 2025; Accepted: 21 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sun, Wu, Fan, Hu, Yang and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Changhao Fan, mr_fanch@163.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.