Sustainable opportunities to recover power plants’ waste heat: a benchmark of techno-economically optimized heat pumps

Current climate targets, adopted worldwide, pursue the decarbonization of all energy sectors. In power generation, the spread of RES has caused the shift of the Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) power plants’ traditional role from providing constant baseload power to flexible operations providing services and backup capacity to the grid, as a consequence, the revenues opportunities on the traditional electricity markets (e.g., day-ahead, and intra-day markets) are no longer certain. At the same time is urgent to address a significant carbon intensity reduction in the heating sector, which is responsible for a large part of the current greenhouse gas emissions. Exploiting the low-exergy waste heat of CCGT’s water-cooled condenser as a thermal source for vapor compression heat pumps can meet two targets. On one hand, the revenues from heat production enhance the viability of the CCGT power plant, often essential for the security of the electrical supply. On the other hand, the heat delivered to the user represents a low-carbon alternative to traditional gas-fired boilers or even to air-sourced heat pumps characterized by lower efficiency. This work assesses the recovery of thermal energy from the sea cooling water at the bottoming cycle condenser of Tirreno Power 794 MWel CCGT in Vado Ligure through a high-temperature heat pump using R600 as a working fluid. Cooling water represents a privileged heat source and the integration into the power plant’s site allows running the HP at a lower cost than the electricity retail price. The case study takes into account the new Vado Ligure sports hall, to size the HP and explore the economic and environmental performances. The proposed layout is compared with the main solutions available: air source heat pump, gas, and electric boilers. The results show that on a lifespan of 20 years such integration of a heat pump with a CCGT could lead to consistent economical savings and emissions cuts.