Thin Coating on Condensers Could Make Power Plants More Efficient

Graphene layer one atom thick could quadruple rate of condensation heat transfer in generating plants.

Most of the world’s electricity-producing power plants — whether powered by coal, natural gas, or nuclear fission — make electricity by generating steam that turns a turbine.  That steam then is condensed back to water, and the cycle begins again.

But the condensers that collect the steam are quite inefficient, and improving them could make a big difference in overall power plant efficiency.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT has developed a way of coating these condenser surfaces with a layer of graphene, just one atom thick, and found that this can improve the rate of heat transfer by a factor of four — and potentially even more than that, with further work.  And unlike polymer coatings, the graphene coatings have proven to be highly durable in laboratory tests.

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