Application of Quantitative Causality Analysis to the Quantification of Intrinsic and Induced Effects in the Thermoeconomic Diagnosis of a Coal-fired Power Plant

Abstract

The aim of thermoeconomic diagnosis is to detect malfunctioning components in thermal systems and to quantify the additional fuel consumption caused by each these components. Thermoeconomics provides tools for this task such as malfunctions, malfunction costs and fuel impact formula, whose applicability to real examples may be difficult due to induced effects. On the other hand, the quantitative causality analysis is a diagnosis method based on a thermodynamic description of the system. In this paper, both approaches are integrated by applying the quantitative causality analysis to perform a systematic quantification of intrinsic and induced effects. The formulation is successfully applied to a coal-fired power plant.This paper is an updated version of a paper published in the ECOS'08 proceedings.