User talk:YADBIR SINGH

THERMAL POWER PLANT SITE REQUIREMENTS
THERMAL POWER PLANT SITE REQURIMENTS.

The Requirements for the Site--YADBIR SINGH (talk) 18:21, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

As the name implies the power plant is meant for generating power which obviously means that it will consume huge quantities of fuel. The exact quantity would depend on the size of the plant and its capacity but it is a general fact that ample quantities of fuel must be available either in the vicinity or it should be reasonably economical to transport the fuel till the power plant. Since most thermal power plants use coal (they can use other fuels as well) it must be ensured that sufficient coal is available round the clock. Just to give you a rough idea a power plant with 1000 MW capacity approximately would require more than ten thousand tons of coal per day hence the necessity for continuous supply and storage capability of coal in the power station. Ash if the main byproduct of combustion and since the amount of coal used is huge, you can intuitively imagine the amount of ash generated and it is certainly in the region of thousand tons per day. Ash is much more difficult to handle as compared to coal since it comes out hot from the boiler and is very corrosive in nature. Disposing of such huge quantities of ash requires a large amount of empty space where it can be safely dumped.

Here must be ample space for the storage of coal, disposal of ash, building of the power plant, residential colony of workers, markets and so forth. An approximate analysis suggests that for every MW of power generated there must be at least 3 acres of land available for the purpose. Hence the power plant site needs to have good amount of land and this land should have good bearing capacity in order to survive the static and dynamic loads during the operation of the plant.

General Layout of the Plant
General Layout of the Plant

Though each plant is unique in itself in terms of specific features and functionalities, still there is a broad outline to which all thermal power plants confirm to and in this article we will study about the general layout of a typical power plant.

There are four main circuits in any thermal power plant and these are 1.Coal & Ash Circuit – this circuit deals mainly with feeding the boiler with coal for combustion purposes and taking care of the ash that is generated during the combustion process and includes equipment and paraphernalia that is used to handle the transfer and storage of coal and ash.

2.Air & Gas Circuit – we know that air is one of the main components of the fire triangle and hence necessary for combustion. Since lots of coal is burnt inside the boiler it needs a sufficient quantity of air which is supplied using either forced draught or induced draught fans. The exhaust gases from the combustion are in turn used to heat the ingoing air through a heat exchanger before being let off in the atmosphere. The equipment which handles all these processes fall under this circuit.

3.Feed Water & Steam Circuit – this section deals with supplying of steam generated from the boiler to the turbines and to handle the outgoing steam from the turbine by cooling it to form water in the condenser so that it can be reused in the boiler plus making good any losses due to evaporation etc.

4 Cooling Water Circuit – this part of the thermal power plant deals with handling of the cooling water required in the system. Since the amount of water required to cool the outgoing steam from the boiler is substantial, it is either taken from a nearby water source such as a river, or it is done through evaporation if the quantity of cooling water available is limited.

The above breakdown of the plant would give you a clear idea about the components of the plant but a complete picture shown below would be more useful in getting an idea how these circuits are integrated together to form the complete power plant.