A new hydrophobic coating for steam condensers could boost the efficiency of coal and natural gas power generation by up to 2%, new research suggests. That would translate into 460 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions saved each year, researchers calculated.
“We’re talking about 85% of the baseload capacity of the Earth, so that 2% is a big number,” says study senior author Nenad Miljkovic, a mechanical engineer at the Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Steam condensers set the back pressure of the steam turbine. The lower that pressure can be, the greater the pressure differential across the turbine, yielding more energy from the process. When water vapor condenses within the condenser, it forms a thin film on the surfaces of the heat exchanger that reduces heat transfer. It’s been known since the 1940s that a hydrophobic coating that coaxes the water vapor to form droplets instead of a film improves heat transfer in condensers, Miljkovic says. However, the standard hydrophobic coatings are either so thin that they degrade quickly, or they are thick enough to stand up against the high-moisture, high-heat conditions in the condenser but interfere with heat transfer themselves...
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