Optimization of Triple-Pressure Combined-Cycle Power Plants by Generalized Disjunctive Programming and Extrinsic Functions

Abstract A new mathematical framework for optimal synthesis, design, and operation of triple-pressure steam-reheat combined-cycle power plants (CCPP) is presented. A superstructure-based representation of the process, which embeds a large number of candidate configurations, is first proposed. Then, a generalized disjunctive programming (GDP) mathematical model is derived from it. Series, parallel, and combined series-parallel arrangements of heat exchangers are simultaneously embedded. Extrinsic functions executed outside GAMS from dynamic-link libraries (DLL) are used to estimate the thermodynamic properties of the working fluids. As a main result, improved process configurations with respect to two reported reference cases were found. The total heat transfer areas calculated in this work are by around 15% and 26% lower than those corresponding to the reference cases. This paper contributes to the literature in two ways: (i) with a disjunctive optimization model of natural gas CCPP and the corresponding solution strategy, and (ii) with improved HRSG configurations.