Utilization of Rice Husk for Power Generation: a Wates-to-Energy Approach for Complementary Energy Supply in Nigeria(a Computational Study)

The growing demand for energy is particularly important to engineers with respect to how the energy produced by heat and power plants can be used efficiently. This research analyzed a rice husk powered gas turbine power plant and considered the efficiency of the power plant through both the first law and the second law of thermodynamics by conducting exergy analysis. The exergy performance criteria such as state exergy, component exergy and efficiency, and exergy destruction (anergy) have been found to be useful methods in design, evaluation, optimization and improvement of energy systems. The rice husk capacity of the plant is 0.042 kg/s. The total anergy of the power plant shows that the combustor is the major component contributing to anergy, with an anergy 87.82 % and exergy efficiency of 21 %, this efficiency is low due to the entropy build-up in the combustor. The preheater has the lowest anergy of 0.42 %. The exergy efficiency of the gas turbine was the highest with an efficiency of 78.09 % and a moderate anergy of 10.59 %. The total power output of the plant is 1.75 MW with an exergy efficiency of 65 % and exergy improvement potential of 695.71 kJ/kg, indicating the possibility of improvement to the plant. The total exergy of the plant is 9161.70 kJ/kg which is close to the theoretical exergy of rice husk of 10,918 kJ/kg. Results of the study shows that rice husk is beneficial to power gas turbine for power generation.