THERMAL POWER PLANT

The Power Plant

Power plant is the place where power or energy is generated from a

given source. Actually the term “generated” in the previous sentence is a misnomer

since energy cannot be created or destroyed but merely changed from one form to the

other.The type of energy converted depends on what type of power plant is being

considered.

Thermal Power Plants

As the name suggests, these power plants convert heat energy

into electrical energy. The working fluid of these plants is mostly steam. A steam power

plant consists of a boiler which is used to generate the steam from water, a prime mover

like a steam turbine to convert the enthalpy of the steam into rotary motion of the turbine

which is linked to the alternator to produce electricity. The steam is again condensed in

the condenser and fed to the boiler again.

Classification

Thermal power plants are classified by the type of fuel and the type of prime mover

installed.

By fuel

Nuclear power plants use a nuclear reactor's heat to operate a steam turbine

generator. About 20% of electric generation in the USA is produced by nuclear power

plants.
 • Fossil fuelled power plants may also use a steam turbine generator or in the

case of natural gas fired plants may use a combustion turbine. A coal-fired power

station produces electricity by burning coal to generate steam, and has the side-

effect of producing a large amount of carbon dioxide, which is released from

burning coal and contributes to global warming. About 50% of electric generation

in the USA is produced by coal fired power plants

• Geothermal power plants use steam extracted from hot underground rocks.

• Renewable energy plants or * Biomass Fuelled Power Plants may be

fuelled by waste from sugar cane, municipal solid waste, landfill methane, or

other forms of biomass.

• In integrated steel mills, blast furnace exhaust gas is a low-cost, although low-

energy-density fuel.

• Waste heat from industrial processes is occasionally concentrated enough to

use for power generation, usually in a steam boiler and turbine.

• Solar thermal electric plants use sunlight to boil water, which turns the

generator.

Coal-fired thermal power plant

More than half of the electricity generated in the world is by using coal as the primary

fuel.Coal power plants work by using several steps to convert stored energy in coal to

usable electricity that we find in our home that powers our lights, computers, and

sometimes, back into heat for our homes.

How Coal Power Plants Produce Electricity

The conversion from coal to electricity takes place in three stages.

Stage 1

The first conversion of energy takes place in the boiler. Coal is burnt in the boiler furnace

to produce heat. Carbon in the coal and Oxygen in the air combine to produce Carbon

Dioxide and heat.

Stage 2

The second stage is the thermodynamic process.The heat from combustion of the coal

boils water in the boiler to produce steam. In modern power plant, boilers produce steam

at a high pressure and temperature. The steam is then piped to a turbine. The high

pressure steam impinges and expands across a number of sets of blades in the turbine.

The impulse and the thrust created rotates the turbine. The steam is then condensed

and pumped back into the boiler to repeat the cycle.

Stage 3

In the third stage, rotation of the turbine rotates the generator rotor to produce electricity

based of Faraday’s Principle of electromagnetic induction.

Key Facts

As an example consider these facts for typical coal fired power plant of capacity 500

MW. Around 2 million tons of coal will be required each year to produce the continuous

power.Around 1.6 million cubic meter of air in an hour is delivered by air fans into the

furnace. he ash produced from this combustion is around 200,000 tons per year.

Pollutants from coal power plants like carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen
oxide can also affect the environment. Thermal power plants are the biggest producers

of Carbon Dioxide.

Solar thermal power plant

Solar thermal energy (STE) is a technology for harnessing solar energy for thermal energy

(heat). Solar thermal collectors are defined by the USA Energy Information Administration as

low-, medium-, or high-temperature collectors. High temperature collectors concentrate

sunlight using mirrors or lenses and are generally used for electric power production. STE is

different from photovoltaics, which convert solar energy directly into electricity. While only

600 megawatts of solar thermal power is up and running worldwide in October 2009

according to Dr David Mills of Ausra, another 400 megawatts is under construction and there

are 14,000 megawatts of the more serious concentrating solar thermal (CST) projects being

developed.

Where temperatures below about 95°C are sufficient, as for space heating, flat-plate

collectors of the nonconcentrating type are generally used. The fluid-filled pipes can

reach temperatures of 150 to 220 degrees Celsius when the fluid is not circulating. This

temperature is too low for efficient conversion to electricity.

The efficiency of heat engines increases with the temperature of the heat source. To

achieve this in solar thermal energy plants, solar radiation is concentrated by mirrors or

lenses to obtain higher temperatures — a technique called Concentrated Solar Power

(CSP).The practical effect of high efficiencies is to reduce the plant's collector size and

total land use per unit power generated, reducing the environmental impacts of a power

plant as well as its expense.

As the temperature increases, different forms of conversion become practical. Up to

600°C, steam turbines, standard technology, have an efficiency up to 41%. Above this,

gas turbines can be more efficient. Higher temperatures are problematic because

different materials and techniques are needed. One proposal for very high temperatures

is to use liquid fluoride salts operating between 700°C to 800°C, using multi-stage

turbine systems to achieve 50% or more thermal efficiencies. The higher operating

temperatures permit the plant to use higher-temperature dry heat exchangers for its

thermal exhaust, reducing the plant's water use — critical in the deserts where large

solar plants are practical. High temperatures also make heat storage more efficient,

because more watt-hours are stored per unit of fluid.

With reliability, unused desert, no pollution (so long as gas turbines aren't used) and no

fuel costs, the obstacles for large deployment for CSP are cost, aesthetics, land use and

similar factors for the necessary connecting high tension lines. Although only a small

percentage of the desert is necessary to meet global electricity demand, still a large area

must be covered with mirrors or lenses to obtain a significant amount of energy. An

important way to decrease cost is the use of a simple design.

Geothermal power plant

Geothermal power (from the Greek roots geo, meaning earth, and thermos, meaning

heat) is power extracted from heat stored in the earth. This geothermal energy originates

from the original formation of the planet, from radioactive decay of minerals, and from

solar energy absorbed at the surface. It has been used for bathing since Paleolithic

times and for space heating since ancient Roman times, but is now better known for

generating electricity. Worldwide, about 10,715 megawatts (MW) of geothermal power is

online in 24 countries. An additional 28 gigawatts of direct geothermal heating capacity

is installed for district heating, space heating, spas, industrial processes, desalination

and agricultural applications.

Geothermal power is cost effective, reliable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly,

but has historically been limited to areas near tectonic plate boundaries. Recent

technological advances have dramatically expanded the range and size of viable

resources, especially for applications such as home heating, opening a potential for

widespread exploitation. Geothermal wells release greenhouse gases trapped deep

within the earth, but these emissions are much lower per energy unit than those of fossil

fuels. As a result, geothermal power has the potential to help mitigate global warming if

widely deployed in place of fossil fuels.

Drilling and exploration for deep resources is very expensive.Forecasts for the future of

geothermal power depend on assumptions about technology, energy prices, subsidies,

and interest rates.

Levelized energy cost(LEC)

Levelized energy cost (LEC, also called Levelized Cost Of Energy or LCOE) is a cost of

generating energy (usually electricity) for a particular system. It is an economic assessment

of the cost of the energy-generating system including all the costs over its lifetime: initial

investment, operations and maintenance, cost of fuel, cost of capital. A net present

value calculation is performed and solved in such a way that for the value of the LEC

chosen, the project's net present value becomes zero.

This means that the LEC is the minimum price at which energy must be sold for an energy

project to break even.

It can be defined in a single formula as:

where

 LEC = Average lifetime levelized electricity generation cost

 It = Investment expenditures in the year t

 Mt = Operations and maintenance expenditures in the year t

 Ft = Fuel expenditures in the year t

 Et = Electricity generation in the year t

 r = Discount rate

 n = Life of the system

Typically LECs are calculated over 20 to 40 year lifetimes, and are given in the units of

currency per kilowatt-hour, for example AUD/kWh or EUR/kWh or per megawatt-hour.

Let’s save energy and use renewable resource for generation of electricity for better

tomorrow.

Works cited:

1. ^ "It's solar power's time to shine". MSN Money. Retrieved 2008-06-05.

2. ^ Manning, Paddy (10 October 2009). "With green power comes great responsibility". Sydney

Morning Herald. Retrieved 2009-10-12.

3. ^ "BrightSource Energy signs whopper solar contract with PG&E". CNET News. 2008-03-31.

Retrieved 2008-06-11.

4. ^ Google's Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal November 27, 2007

5. ^ ANU 'Big Dish', http://solar-thermal.anu.edu.au/

6. Nuclear Energy Agency/International Energy Agency/Organisation for Economic

Cooperation and Development Projected Costs of Generating Electricity (2005 Update)

7. Bertani, Ruggero (2009), "Geothermal Energy: An Overview on Resources and Potential",

Proceedings of the International Conference on National Development of Geothermal Energy Use,

Slovakia

8. Nuclear Power Plants Information, by International Atomic Energy Agency

9. Thomas C. Elliott, Kao Chen, Robert Swanekamp (coauthors) (1997). Standard Handbook of

Powerplant Engineering (2nd edition ed.). McGraw-Hill Professional. ISBN 0-07-019435-1.