Converting Coal to Electricity

Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering

Agenda
Where Does the Energy Come From? How Does Conversion Occur? The Carnot Limit (system efficiency concepts)

Rankine, Brayton and Combined Cycles Combined Heat and Power Emissions and Emissions Controls Electric Generators, Transmission and Distribution, Real and Reactive Power
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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Primary energy
Energy content of original resource
Coal Natural gas Petroleum Hydro Wind Solar

Direct use of sunlight for building use (illumination, passive solar heating) not included
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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

How much reserves in fossil fuels?

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

How much reserves in fossil fuels?

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How long will that last?

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

What is Coal
Anthracite
Hard Coal or Black Coal

Bituminous Coal
soft coal

Sub-Bituminous coal
Also Lignite or Brown Coal
(not pictured)

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Why the difference

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

The conversion chain

As we discuss matters in class we may use the terms primary energy, delivered energy and useful energy What is the difference?

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Example for discussion

A coal fired power plant burns 300 tons of subbituminous coal per hour to yield 620 MWe. a) What is the primary energy content? b) How much energy was produced?

c) What is the efficiency of the process?

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Example
A) looking at the coal slide that came before we get sub-bituminous coal yields 24 GJ/ton Therefore 300 tons x 24GJ/ton = 7,200 GJ = 7.2 TJ B) Taking the 620 MW over an hour, we get 620 MW x 3600s = 2.23 TJ C) Efficiency is the ratio between the produced power and the primary power 2.23TJ / 7.2TJ = 32.3% efficiency
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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Efficiency
Pout Eout Eout Efficiency Pin Ein Qin Win

1st law of thermodynamics

The increase in the internal energy of a system is equal to the amount of energy added by heating the system minus the amount lost as a result of the work done by the system on its surroundings (conservation of energy)

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Carnot Efficiency
2nd law
The entropy change of any process is greater than or equal to zero (i.e., there will always be some wasted energy)

Carnot Efficiency Carnot

Thot Tcold Tcold 1 Thot Thot

The Carnot Efficiency is the *maximum* efficiency of a heat engine

(i.e., a heat engine can only run less efficiently than that, not more)

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Efficiency of a series of processes

From conversion chain: combustion (& heat exchanger) steam turbine electric generator distribution grid appliance

system combustion turbine generator grid appliance

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Example: Efficiency of an incandescent lamp Assume grid efficiency 92%

Already include typical Carnot term

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Example: Efficiency of an incandescent lamp

system combustion turbine generator grid appliance

From the table and info we can get the following

system 94% 42% 98% 92% 4% 1.5% Efficient

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Prevalent Combustion Systems

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Pressurized Circulating Fluidized Bed Combustor

Major advantages: Keeps heat exchanger out of the combustion zone Minimizes release of unbunrt fuel in FBC
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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Converting heat to motion

Heros Machine (aeolipyle) Described by Ctesibius in 250 BC

Giovanni Brancas prime mover Described in 1629 Followed by Savery, Newcomen, Watt and Trevithick
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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Steam Turbines impulse wheel 1

Think of Brancas device
Conversion of steam (heat) to motion relies on escaping high pressure gas making a jet

Lets use 1000 m.s-1 as a reasonable jet speed

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Steam Turbines impulse wheel 2

Conversion of kinetic energy in jet to motion accomplished by collision with paddles Maximum energy transfer occurs when paddle speed = jet speed
If jet speed = 1000 m.s-1 then paddle speed = 500 m.s-1

Think of small radius device (original Parsons turbine is 15cm)

What is angular velocity for device? (in rpm)

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Reaction turbine

Developed by Charles Parsons, 1889 Basically, a set of vanes converting steam jet speed into motion

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Steam turbines

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Combustion Emissions
SOx
de-SOx slurry injection

NOx
de-NOx ammonia/urea injection, selective catalytic reduction

Particulate Matter (PM)

bag filters/electrostatic precipitators

CO / CO2
CO usually not an issue with well-controlled power plants CO2: carbon capture and sequestration Much research into Carbon Capture coal power plants

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab

Looking Ahead
Next week:
Brief intro/review of thermo Rankine, Brayton and Combined Cycles Combined heat and power Dealing with combustion products Electric power system primer

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Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Lab