Development of a baseline reference design for an open cycle MHD power plant for commercial service

A detailed reference design for a coal-fired open cycle MHD/steam binary cycle power-plant is being developed under sponsorship of the United States Energy Research and Development Administration. The design effort is to be carried beyond the conceptual and preliminary stages so that hardware procurement specification actually could be written. This paper describes the conceptual basis for the design, the envelope of economic and engineering constraints within which plant optimization has been carried out, and selected critical design problems. It is shown that for certain coals, fuel preprocessing promises significant benefits. The impact of coal drying and its influence on bottoming plant design is examined in detail. Also discussed are plant startup, availability, NOx control problems, and the approach to instrumentation and control to be used.