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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 “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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How much reserves in fossil fuels?

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How much reserves in fossil fuels?

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How long will that last?

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 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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 Why the difference

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 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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 Example for discussion
A coal fired power plant burns 300 tons of sub-
bituminous 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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 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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 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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 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)

Thot  Tcold Tcold

Carnot Efficiency  Carnot   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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 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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 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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Prevalent Combustion Systems

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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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Converting heat to motion
“Hero’s Machine” (aeolipyle)
Described by Ctesibius in 250 BC

“Giovanni Branca’s prime mover”

Described in 1629

Followed by Savery, Newcomen,

Watt and Trevithick
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 Steam Turbines – impulse wheel 1
Think of Branca’s device
• Conversion of steam (heat) to motion relies on escaping high
pressure gas making a jet

• Let’s use 1000 m.s-1 as a reasonable jet speed

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 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 = ½ 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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 Reaction turbine

• Developed by Charles Parsons, 1889

• Basically, a set of vanes converting steam jet speed into
motion
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 Steam turbines

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 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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 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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