Assessment on Life Cycle of Water-Cooled and Air-Cooled Ultra-Supercritical Power Generation Technology

A whole life cycle inventory of 1000 MW Ultra-supercritical water-cooled and air-cooled coal-fired power plants was produced by life cycle analysis methodology.Assessment on the energy consumption,the effects to environment,the cost of life cycle and the comprehensive evaluation indexes were comparatively analyzed for the Ultra-supercritical water-cooled and air-cooled coal-fired power plants.The results show that 3.08×10~8 m~3 water will be saved by the air-cooled power plants than one by the water-cooled power plants and the life-cycle evaluation index value of water-cooled power plants will be lower 11.7%than one of air-cooled power plants in a whole life cycle. So technical and policy support is necessary in order to develop air-cooled power plants in dry-land.