Thermal Power Plant Essay

Thermal Power Plants are the most important source of power generation. They are based on the Rankine Cycle where high pressure and high temperature steam raised in a boiler is expanded through a steam turbine that drives an electric generator. In a thermal power plant, the chemical energy stored in fossil fuels such as coal, fuel oil, natural gas is converted successively into thermal energy, mechanical energy and finally electrical energy for continuous use and distribution across a wide geographic area.

Thermal Power plants have very high availability.

Their unplanned or forced outage rates are very low. Thermal Power Plant assets need to be flexible to meet rapidly fluctuating demand levels. They also need to remain reliable and demonstrate that every effort has been made to minimize environmental impacts and maximize efficiency. LITERATURE REVIEW Energy Management has become very important nowadays. It is the control of energy consuming devices for the purpose of minimizing energy demand and consumption. Business, industry and government organizations are all been under tremendous economic and environmental pressures.

Being economically competitive in the global marketplace and meeting increasing environmental standards to reduce air and water pollution have been the major driving factors in most of the recent operational cost and capital cost investment decisions. Energy Management hence, has been an important tool to help organizations meet these critical objectives for their short term survival and long-term success. Energy management helps improve environmental quality. It reduces the load on power plants as fewer kilowatt hours of electricity are needed.

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Power Generation In Thermal Power Plant

Hence, less thermal pollution at power plants and less cooling water discharge are produced. Reduced cooling requirements or more efficient satisfaction of those needs means less CFC usage and reduced ozone depletion in the stratosphere. Energy management in the form of implementing new energy efficiency technologies, new materials and new manufacturing processes and the use of new technologies in equipment and materials for business and industry is also helping companies improve their productivity and increase their product or service quality.

RECENT CONCEPTS Some of the recent concepts are directed at the development of advanced technologies and knowledge products that can enhance the environmental performance of the existing fleet of coal-fired power plants. The overall goal of these efforts is to reduce the amount of freshwater needed for power plant operations and to minimize potential impacts on water quality and increase in reliability due to better control of the operation by providing instrumentation of the latest design.

The program is built around four specific areas of research: •Non-Traditional Sources of Process and Cooling Water •Innovative Water Reuse and Recovery •Advanced Cooling Technology •Advanced Water Treatment and Detection Technology Non-Traditional sources of Process and Cooling water: Research and analysis are being conducted to evaluate and develop cost-effective approaches to using non-traditional sources of water to supplement or replace freshwater for cooling and thermal power plant needs.

Examples include surface and underground mine pool water, geological carbon sequestration and coal-bed methane produced waters, and industrial and/or municipal wastewater. This will help save freshwater. Innovative water Reuse and Recovery: Research is currently underway to develop advanced technologies to reuse power plant cooling water and associated waste heat and investigate methods to recover water from coal and power plant flue gas. This project has two objectives.

The first objective is to develop a cost-effective liquid desiccant-based dehumidification technology to recover a large fraction of the water present in the plant flue gas. The second objective is to perform an engineering evaluation to determine how such a technology can be integrated to recover water, improve efficiency, and reduce stack emissions of acid gases and carbon dioxide. Advanced Cooling Technology: This component of the program is focused on research to develop technologies that improve performance and reduce costs associated with wet cooling, dry cooling, and hybrid cooling technologies.

In addition, the research area covers innovative methods to control bio-fouling of cooling water intake structures as well as advances in intake structure systems. Advanced water treatment and Detection Technology: Future controls on the emission of mercury and possibly other trace elements have raised concerns about the ultimate fate of these contaminants once they are removed from the flue gas. In addition, ammonia from selective catalytic reduction systems used to control nitrogen oxide emissions can appear in a power plant’s wastewater streams such as ash sluice water.

Research is needed for advanced technologies to detect and remove mercury, arsenic, selenium and other components from the aqueous streams of coal-based power plants should effluent standards be tightened in the future. CONCLUSION Energy management has become a very important subject in today’s world and it offers outstanding opportunities for those willing to invest time and effort to learn the fundamentals.

The objectives of the said project will be fulfilled only if the performance of all thermal power generating units or thermal power plants improves and approaches the world class standards. In my opinion, the mass movement for performance improvement of thermal power generating units will give additional impetus and facilitate the process of achieving the desired objective. The model world class power plants will inspire the other power generating units to join the movement and demonstrate the benefits of achieving the world class standards.