Beneficial Uses of Waste-Heat from Electric
Power Plants for New Town Heating and
Cooling
E. V. SOMERS, Manager
Ecological Systems Research
W. S. LUSBY, Manager
Marketing and Communications
F. J. SISK, Advisory Engineer
Ecological Systems Research
Research Laboratories
Westinghouse Electric Corporation
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
INTRODUCTION
High priority is being given to management of natural resources and at the
same time to conservation and optimization of the faltering physical environment.
Within the past year an immense transformation has occurred in public concern
about the physical environment.
Thermal pollution of receiving waters from nuclear and other steam electric
power plants, is now yielding to approaches that characterize residual heat from
electric power generation as a major energy resource. The combination of electric
energy and residual heat can be exploited to obtain greater overall advantage, in that
use of the residual heat at locations distant from the station offers economic values
in excess of the cost required to generate, transmit, and distribute the heat and that
it disperses the residual heat over the large urban area.
New town applications with 100 percent heating and cooling of all living space
and office working space include newly built towns, the "new-town-in-town", and
satellite towns adjacent to existing large cities. Good management and existing
technology will couple conservation of natural resources with the human need to use
these resources to achieve life objectives. The size of the new town is coupled with
the type and size of the electric power plant. Different types of existing technology
will couple conservation of natural resources with the human need to use these
resources to achieve electric power will be generated in excess of that needed for the
population of the town, flexibility exists in designing the town to use the residual
heat near the electric power and to supply electric energy needs remote from the
plant.
A proposed innovation abandons designing electric power plants for minimum
heat rate and reduces the electrical power to 85 percent of that obtained in past
designs, by stopping the steam expansion at a higher temperature. This will provide
water heated in excess of 200 F for the town.
975