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THERMAL POWER

PLANT
By
Ashvani Shukla
C&I
reliance

INTRODUCTION
Thermal power generation plant or thermal power
station is the most conventional source of electric power.
Thermal power plant is also referred as coal thermal
power plant and steam turbine power plant. Before going
into detail of this topic, we will try to understand the line
diagram of electric power generation plant.Athermal
power stationis apower plantin whichheat energyis
converted toelectric power. In most of the world theprime
mover issteamdriven. Water is heated, turns into steam
and spins asteam turbinewhich drives an
electrical generator. After it passes through the turbine, the
steam iscondensedin acondenserand recycled to where it
was heated; this is known as aRankin cycle.

THEORY OF THERMAL
POWER STATION
The theory of thermal power station or
working of thermal power station is
very simple. A power generation plant
mainly consists of alternator runs with
help of steam turbine. The steam is
obtained from high pressure boilers.
Generally in India, bituminous coal, brown
coal and peat are used as fuel of boiler.
The bituminous coal is used as boiler fuel
has volatile matter from 8 to 33 % and ash
content 5 to 16 %. To increase the thermal

In coal thermal power plant, the steam is produced in high pressure in


the steam boiler due to burning of fuel (pulverized coal) in boiler
furnaces. This steam is further supper heated in a super heater. This
supper heated steam then enters into the turbine and rotates the turbine
blades. The turbine is mechanically so coupled with alternator that its
rotor will rotate with the rotation of turbine blades. After entering in
turbine the steam pressure suddenly falls and corresponding volume of
the steam increases. After imparting energy to the turbine rotor the
steam passes out of the turbine blades into the condenser. In the
condenser the cold water is circulated with the help of pump which
condenses the low pressure wet steam. This condensed water is further
supplied to low pressure water heater where the low pressure steam
increases the temperature of this feed water, it is again heated in high
pressure. For better understanding we furnish every step of function of a
thermal power station as follows,
1) First the pulverized coal is burnt into the furnace of steam boiler.
2) High pressure steam is produced in the boiler.

6) After rotating the turbine blades, the steam has lost its high pressure, passes out of turbine blades
and enters into a condenser.
7) In the condenser the cold water is circulated with help of pump which condenses the low pressure
wet steam.
8) This condensed water is then further supplied to low pressure water heater where the low pressure
steam increases the temperature of this feed water, it is then again heated in a high pressure heater
where the high pressure of steam is used for heating.
9) The turbine in thermal power station acts as a prime mover of the alternator.

Rankin
cycle

WORKING OF RANKIN
CYCLE
A typical Thermal Power Station Operates on a Cycle which is shown
below.

The working fluid is water and steam. This is called feed water and steam cycle. The ideal
Thermodynamic Cycle to which the operation of a Thermal Power Station closely resembles
is the RANKINE CYCLE. In steam boiler the water is heated up by burning the fuel in air in
the furnace & the function of the boiler is to give dry super heated steam at required
temperature. The steam so produced is used in driving the steam Turbines. This turbine is
coupled to synchronous generator (usually three phase synchronous alternator), which
generates electrical energy. The exhaust steam from the turbine is allowed to condense
into water in steam condenser of turbine, which creates suction at very low pressure and
allows the expansion of the steam in the turbine to a very low pressure. The principle
advantages of condensing operation are the increased amount of energy extracted per kg
of steam and thereby increasing efficiency and the condensate which is fed into the boiler
again reduces the amount of fresh feed water.
The condensate along with some fresh make up feed water is again fed into the boiler by
pump (called the boiler feed pump). In condenser the steam is condensed by cooling
water. Cooling water recycles through cooling tower. This constitutes cooling water circuit.
The ambient air is allowed to enter in the boiler after dust filtration. Also the flue gas
comes out of the boiler and exhausted into atmosphere through stacks. These constitute
air and flue gas circuit. The flow of air and also the static pressure inside the steam boiler
(called draught) is maintained by two fans called Forced Draught (FD) fan and Induced
Draught(ID) fan.

RANKIN CYCLE

TYPE OF THERMAL POWER


PLANT
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

CO-GENERATION POWER PLANT


CAPTIVE POWER PALNTS
SUBCRITICAL POWER PLANTS
SUPER CRITICAL POWER PLANTS
ULTRA SUPERCRITICAL POWER PLANTS

CO-GENERATION POWER
PLANT

Cogeneration is also called as combined heat and power or combine heat and
power. As it name indicates cogeneration works on concept of producing two different
form of energy by using one single source of fuel. Out of these two forms one must be
heat or thermal energy and other one is either electrical or mechanical energy.
Cogeneration is the most optimum, reliable, clean and efficient way of utilizing fuel. The
fuel used may be natural gas, oil, diesel , propane, wood, bagasse, coal etc. It works on
very simple principle i.e. the fuel is used to generate electricity and this electricity
produces heat and this heat is used to boil water to produce steam , for space heating
and even in cooling buildings. In conventional power plant , the fuel is burnt in a boiler ,
which in turn produces high pressure steam. This high pressure steam is used to drive a
tribune, which is in turn is connected to an alternator and hence drive an alternator to
produce electric energy. The exhaust steam is then sent to the condenser, where it gets
cool down and gets converted to water and hence return back to boiler for producing
more electrical energy. The efficiency of this conventional power plant is 35% only. In
cogeneration plant the low pressure steam coming from turbine is not condense to
form water, instead of it its used for heating or cooling in building and factories, as this
low pressure steam from turbine has high thermal energy. The cogeneration plant has
high efficiency of around 80 - 90 %. In India, the potential of power generation from
cogeneration plant is more than 20,000 MW.

Need for Cogeneration


a) Cogeneration helps to improve the efficiency of the plant.
b) Cogeneration reduce air emissions of particulate matter, nitrous oxides, sulphur dioxide,
mercury and carbon dioxide which would otherwise leads to greenhouse effect.
c) It reduces cost of production and improve productivity.
d) Cogeneration system helps to save water consumption and water costs.
e) Cogeneration system is more economical as compared to conventional power plant
Types of Cogeneration Power Plants
In a typical Combined heat and power plant system there is a steam or gas turbine which
take steam and drives an alternator. A waste heat exchanger is also installed in cogeneration
plant, which recovers the excess heat or exhaust gas from the electric generator to in turn
generate steam or hot water. There are basically two types of cogeneration power plants,
such as- Topping cycle power plant Bottoming cycle power plant Topping cycle power
plant- In this type of Combine Heat and Power plant electricity is generated first and then
waste or exhaust steam is used to heating water or building . There are basically four types of
topping cycles. a) Combined-cycle topping CHP plant - In this type of plant the fuel is firstly
burnt in a steam boiler . The steam so produced in a boiler is used to drive turbine and hence
synchronous generator which in turn produces electrical energy . The exhaust from this
turbine can be either used to provide usable heat, or can be send to a heat recovery system
to generate steam, which maybe further used to drive a secondary steam turbine.

b) Steam-turbine topping CHP Plant- In this the fuel is burned to produce steam,
which generates power. The exhaust steam is then used as low-pressure process
steam to heat water for various purposes.
c) Water- turbine topping CHP Plant- In this type of CHP plant a jacket of cooling
water is run through a heat recovery system to generate steam or hot water for
space heating. d) Gas turbine topping CHP plant- In This topping plant a natural
gas fired turbine is used to drives a synchronous generator to produce electricity.
The exhaust gas is sent to a heat recovery boiler where it is used to convert water
into steam, or to make usable heat for heating purposes.
Bottoming cycle power plant - As its name indicate bottoming cycle is exactly
opposite of topping cycle. In this type of CHP plant the excess heat from a
manufacturing process is used to generate steam, and this steam is used for
generating electrical energy. In this type of cycle no extra fuel is required to
produce electricity, as fuel is already burnt in production process.
Configuration of Cogeneration Plant
Gas turbine Combine heat power plants which uses the waste heat in the flue
gas emerging out of gas turbines. Steam turbine Combine heat power plants
that use the heating system as the jet steam condenser for the steam turbine.
Molten-carbonate fuel cells have a hot exhaust, very suitable for heating.
Combined cycle power plants adapted for Combine Heat and Power.

2. CAPTIVE POWER PLANT


Acaptive power plantis a facility that is dedicated to providing a
localised source of power to an energy user. These are typically
industrialfacilities or large offices. The plants may operate in grid
parallel mode with the ability to export surplus power to the local
electricity distribution network. Alternatively they may have the ability
to operate inisland mode; i.e. independently of the local electricity
distribution system. Captive power plants are a form of distributed
generation, generating power close to the source of use. Distributed
generation facilitates the high fuel efficiency along with minimising
losses associated with the transmission of electricity from centralised
power plants.Captive power plants are used to generate the power for
ourselfs or out plant load or house load.it will be synchronized to grid
for import and export the power depend upon our requirement.

SUB CRITICAL POWER PLANT

In a coal based power plant coal is transported from coal mines to the power
plant by railway in wagons or in a merry-go-round system. Coal is unloaded
from the wagons to a moving underground conveyor belt. This coal from the
mines is of no uniform size. So it is taken to the Crusher house and crushed to
a size of 20mm. From the crusher house the coal is either stored in dead
storage( generally 40 days coal supply) which serves as coal supply in case of
coal supply bottleneck or to the live storage(8 hours coal supply) in the raw
coal bunker in the boiler house. Raw coal from the raw coal bunker is supplied
to the Coal Mills by a Raw Coal Feeder. The Coal Mills or pulverizer pulverizes
the coal to 200 mesh size. The powdered coal from the coal mills is carried to
the boiler in coal pipes by high pressure hot air. The pulverized coal air
mixture is burnt in the boiler in the combustion zone.
Generally in modern boilers tangential firing system is used i.e. the coal
nozzles/ guns form tangent to a circle. The temperature in fire ball is of the
order of 1300 deg.C. The boiler is a water tube boiler hanging from the top.
Water is converted to steam in the boiler and steam is separated from water
in the boiler Drum. The saturated steam from the boiler drum is taken to the
Low Temperature Superheater, Platen Superheater and Final Superheater
respectively for superheating. The superheated steam from the final
superheater is taken to the High Pressure Steam Turbine (HPT). In the HPT the
steam pressure is utilized to rotate the turbine and the resultant is rotational
energy. From the HPT the out coming steam is taken to the Reheater in the
boiler to increase its temperature as the steam becomes wet at the HPT
outlet. After reheating this steam is taken to the Intermediate Pressure

SUPER CRITICAL POWER


PLANT
WHAT IS CRITICAL ABOUT SUPER CRITICAL POWER
GENERATION Supercritical " is a thermodynamic expression
describing the state of a substance where there is no clear
distinction between the liquid and the gaseous phase (i.e. they
are a homogenous fluid). Water reaches this state at a pressure
above around 220 Kg Bar ( 225.56 Kg / cm2) and Temperature
= 374.15 C. In addition, there is no surface tension in a
supercritical fluid, as there is no liquid/gas phase boundary.
WHAT IS CRITICAL ABOUT SUPER CRITICAL POWER
GENERATION
By changing the pressure and temperature of the fluid, the
properties can be tuned to be more liquid- or more gas like.
Carbon dioxide and water are the most commonly used
supercritical fluids, being used for decaffeination and power
generation, respectively.

CHALLENGES FOR ADOTION


OF SUPER CRITICAL
TECHNOLOGY
Up to an operating pressure of around 190Kg Bar in the evaporator part
of the boiler, the cycle is Sub-Critical. In this case a drum-type boiler is
used because the steam needs to be separated from water in the drum
of the boiler before it is superheated and led into the turbine. Above an
operating pressure of 220Kg Bar in the evaporator part of the Boiler,
the cycle is Supercritical. The cycle medium is a single phase fluid with
homogeneous properties and there is no need to separate steam from
water in a drum. Thus, the drum of the drum-type boiler which is very
heavy and located on the top of the boiler can be eliminated Oncethrough boilers are therefore used in supercritical cycles. Advanced
Steel types must be used for components such as the boiler and the
live steam and hot reheat steam piping that are in direct contact with
steam under elevated conditions STEAM GENRATION IN NA

STEAM GENRATION IN NATURAL


CIRCULATION & ONCE THROUGH
BOILER

STEAM GENRATION IN NATURAL


CIRCULATION & ONCE THROUGH
BOILER

BOILER FOR SUPERCRITICAL ONCE


THROUGH POWER PLANT

O Once through Boiler technology, which originated in Europe, has evolved


into the most effective application for Supper Critical Steam condition.
There are no operational limitations due to once- through boilers
compared to drum type boilers.
In fact once-through boilers are better suited to frequent load variations
than drum type boilers, since the drum is a component with a high wall
thickness, requiring controlled heating. This limits the load change rate to
3% per minute, while once-through boilers can step-up the load by 5% per
minute.
This makes once-through boilers more suitable for fast startup as well as
for transient conditions.

CHANGE FROM NATURAL CIRCULATION TO ONCE THROUGH IS


MORE IMPPORTANT THAN THE SWITCH FROM SUB-TO SUPER
CRITICAL

BOILER FOR SUPERCRITICAL ONCE


THROUGH POWER PLANT

Once-through boilers have been favored in many countries, for more than 30
years.
They can be used up to a pressure of more than 300 Kg Bar without any change
in the process engineering. Wall thicknesses of the tubes and headers however
need to be designed to match the planned pressure level.
Once-through boilers have been designed in both two-pass and tower type
design, depending on the fuel requirements and the manufacturers general
practice.
For the past 30 years, large once-through boilers have been built with a spiral
shaped arrangement of the tubes in the evaporator zone.
The latest designs of once-through boilers use a vertical tube arrangement

BOILER CONCEPTS SUPRCRITICAL BENSON TYPE

SUPERCRITICAL ONCE THROUGH POWER PLANT


TURBINE GENERATOR
The Turbine designs for a Super Critical plant are similar to the sub
critical with the only special materials required for the casings and
walls for withstanding high Temperatures and pressures.
High Pressure (HP) Turbine : In order to cater for the higher steam
parameters in supercritical cycles, materials with an elevated
chromium content which yield higher material strength are
selected.
Intermediate Pressure (IP) Turbine Section: In supercritical cycles
there is a trend to increase the temperature of the reheat steam
that enters the IP turbine section in order to raise the cycle
efficiency. As long as the reheat temperature is kept at 560 DEGC
there is not much difference in the IP section of Sub critical and
Super Critical plants.
Low Pressure (LP) Turbine Section: The LP turbine sections in
supercritical plants are not different from those in subcritical
plants.

CHALLENGES FOR ADOPTION OF SUERCRITICAL TECHNOLOGY


O DNB (DEPARTURE FROM NUCLEATE BOILING)

& DO (DRY OUT)

O DAMAGING THERMAL STRESSES ARISING OUT OF TEMPERATURE


DIFFERENCE AT EVAPORAOR OUTLET
SPIRAL WATER WALL,TUBING & HEAT FLUX

SPIRAL WATER WALL, TUBING & HEAT


FLUX

TUBE TEMPERATURE EVAPORATOR


OUTLET

THANK YOU

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