The description of some of the components written above is

described as follows:
1. Cooling towers
Cooling Towers are evaporative coolers used for cooling water or other working
medium to near the ambivalent web-bulb air temperature. Cooling tower use
evaporation of water to reject heat from processes such as cooling the circulating
water used in oil refineries, Chemical plants, power plants and building cooling,
for example. The tower vary in size from small roof-top units to very large
hyperboloid structures that can be up to 200 meters tall and 100 meters in diameter,
or rectangular structure that can be over 40 meters tall and 80 meters long. Smaller
towers are normally factory built, while larger ones are constructed on site.
The primary use of large , industrial cooling tower system is to remove the heat
absorbed in the circulating cooling water systems used in power plants , petroleum
refineries, petrochemical and chemical plants, natural gas processing plants and
other industrial facilities . The absorbed heat is rejected to the atmosphere by the
evaporation of some of the cooling water in mechanical forced-draft or induced
draft towers or in natural draft hyperbolic shaped cooling towers as seen at most
nuclear power plants.
2.Three phase transmission line
Three phase electric power is a common method of electric power transmission. It
is a type of polyphase system mainly used to power motors and many other
devices. A Three phase system uses less conductor material to transmit electric
power than equivalent single phase, two phase, or direct current system at the same
voltage. In a three phase system, three circuits reach their instantaneous peak
values at different times. Taking one conductor as the reference, the other two
current are delayed in time by one-third and two-third of one cycle of the electrical
current. This delay between phases has the effect of giving constant power
transfer over each cycle of the current and also makes it possible to produce a
rotating magnetic field in an electric motor.
At the power station, an electric generator converts mechanical power into a set of
electric currents, one from each electromagnetic coil or winding of the generator.
The current are sinusoidal functions of time, all at the same frequency but offset in
time to give different phases. In a three phase system the phases are spaced
equally, giving a phase separation of one-third one cycle. Generators output is at a

voltage that ranges from hundreds of volts to 30,000 volts. At the power station,
transformers: step-up this voltage to one more suitable for transmission.
After numerous further conversions in the transmission and distribution network
the power is finally transformed to the standard mains voltage (i.e. the household
voltage).
The power may already have been split into single phase at this point or it may still
be three phase. Where the step-down is 3 phase, the output of this transformer is
usually star connected with the standard mains voltage being the phase-neutral
voltage.
3.Electrical generator
An Electrical generator is a device that converts kinetic energy to electrical energy
generally using electromagnetic induction. The task of converting the electrical
energy into mechanical energy is accomplished by using a motor. The source of
mechanical energy may be a reciprocating or turbine steam engine,water falling
through the turbine are made in a variety of sizes ranging from small 1 hp (0.75
kW) units (rare) used as mechanical drives for pumps, compressors and other shaft
driven equipment , to 2,000,000 hp(1,500,000 kW) turbines used to generate
electricity. There are several classifications for modern steam turbines.
Steam turbines are used in all of our major coal fired power stations to drive the
generators or alternators, which produce electricity. The turbines themselves are
driven by steam generated in Boilers or steam generators as they are sometimes
called.
Energy in the steam after it leaves the boiler is converted into rotational energy as
it passes through the turbine. The turbine normally consists of several stage with
each stages consisting of a stationary blade (or nozzle) and a rotating blade.
Stationary blades convert the potential energy of the steam into kinetic energy into
forces, caused by pressure drop, which results in the rotation of the turbine shaft.
The turbine shaft is connected to a generator, which produces the electrical energy.
4.Boiler feed water pump
A Boiler feed water pump is a specific type of pump used to pump water into a
steam boiler. The water may be freshly supplied or retuning condensation of the
steam produced by the boiler. These pumps are normally high pressure units that
use suction from a condensate return system and can be of the centrifugal pump
type or positive displacement type.

Construction and operation:

Feed water pumps range in size up to many horsepower and the electric motor is
usually separated from the pump body by some form of mechanical coupling.
Large industrial condensate pumps may also serve as the feed water pump. In
either case, to force the water into the boiler; the pump must generate sufficient
pressure to overcome the steam pressure developed by the boiler. This is usually
accomplished through the use of a centrifugal pump.
Feed water pumps usually run intermittently and are controlled by a float switch or
other similar level-sensing device energizing the pump when it detects a lowered
liquid level in the boiler is substantially increased. Some pumps contain a twostage switch. As liquid lowers to the trigger point of the first stage, the pump is
activated. I f the liquid continues to drop (perhaps because the pump has failed, its
supply has been cut off or exhausted, or its discharge is blocked); the second stage
will be triggered. This stage may switch off the boiler equipment (preventing the
boiler from running dry and overheating), trigger an alarm, or both.
5. Steam-powered pumps
Steam locomotives and the steam engines used on ships and stationary applications
such as power plants also required feed water pumps. In this situation, though, the
pump was often powered using a small steam engine that ran using the steam
produced by the boiler. A means had to be provided, of course, to put the initial
charge of water into the boiler(before steam power was available to operate the
steam-powered feed water pump).The pump was often a positive displacement
pump that had steam valves and cylinders at one end and feed water cylinders at
the other end; no crankshaft was required.
In thermal plants, the primary purpose of surface condenser is to condense the
exhaust steam from a steam turbine to obtain maximum efficiency and also to
convert the turbine exhaust steam into pure water so that it may be reused in the
steam generator or boiler as boiler feed water. By condensing the exhaust steam of
a turbine at a pressure below atmospheric pressure, the steam pressure drop
between the inlet and exhaust of the turbine is increased, which increases the
amount heat available for conversion to mechanical power. Most of the heat
liberated due to condensation of the exhaust steam is carried away by the cooling
medium (water or air) used by the surface condenser.

6. Control valves
Control valves are valves used within industrial plants and elsewhere to control
operating conditions such as temperature,pressure,flow,and liquid Level by fully
partially opening or closing in response to signals received from controllers that
compares a set point to a process variable whose value is provided by sensors
that monitor changes in such conditions. The opening or closing of control valves
is done by means of electrical, hydraulic or pneumatic systems
7. Deaerator
A Dearator is a device for air removal and used to remove dissolved gases (an
alternate would be the use of water treatment chemicals) from boiler feed water to
make it non-corrosive. A dearator typically includes a vertical domed deaeration
section as the deaeration boiler feed water tank. A Steam generating boiler requires
that the circulating steam, condensate, and feed water should be devoid of
dissolved gases, particularly corrosive ones and dissolved or suspended solids. The
gases will give rise to corrosion of the metal. The solids will deposit on the heating
surfaces giving rise to localized heating and tube ruptures due to overheating.
Under some conditions it may give to stress corrosion cracking.
Deaerator level and pressure must be controlled by adjusting control valves- the
level by regulating condensate flow and the pressure by regulating steam flow. If
operated properly, most deaerator vendors will guarantee that oxygen in the
deaerated water will not exceed 7 ppb by weight (0.005 cm3/L)
8. Feed water heater
A Feed water heater is a power plant component used to pre-heat water delivered
to a steam generating boiler. Preheating the feed water reduces the irreversible
involved in steam generation and therefore improves the thermodynamic efficiency
of the system.[4] This reduces plant operating costs and also helps to avoid thermal
shock to the boiler metal when the feed water is introduces back into the steam
cycle.
In a steam power (usually modeled as a modified Ranking cycle), feed water
heaters allow the feed water to be brought up to the saturation temperature very
gradually. This minimizes the inevitable irreversibilitys associated with heat
transfer to the working fluid (water). A belt conveyor consists of two pulleys, with
a continuous loop of material- the conveyor Belt that rotates about them. The
pulleys are powered, moving the belt and the material on the belt forward.

9. Pulverizer
A pulverizer is a device for grinding coal for combustion in a furnace in a fossil
fuel power plant.
10. Boiler Steam Drum
Steam Drums are a regular feature of water tube boilers. It is reservoir of
water/steam at the top end of the water tubes in the water-tube boiler. They store
the steam generated in the water tubes and act as a phase separator for the
steam/water mixture. The difference in densities between hot and cold water helps
in the accumulation of the hotter-water/and saturated steam into steam drum.
Made from high-grade steel (probably stainless) and its working involves
temperatures 390C and pressure well above 350psi (2.4MPa). The separated
steam is drawn out from the top section of the drum. Saturated steam is drawn off
the top of the drum. The steam will re-enter the furnace in through a super heater,
while the saturated water at the bottom of steam drum flows down to the muddrum /feed water drum by down comer tubes accessories include a safety valve,
water level indicator and fuse plug. A steam drum is used in the company of a
mud-drum/feed water drum which is located at a lower level. So that it acts as a
sump for the sludge or sediments which have a tendency to the bottom.
11. Super Heater
A Super heater is a device in a steam engine that heats the steam generated by the
boiler again increasing its thermal energy and decreasing the likelihood that it will
condense inside the engine. Super heaters increase the efficiency of the steam
engine, and were widely adopted. Steam which has been superheated is logically
known as superheated steam; non-superheated steam is called saturated steam or
wet steam; Super heaters were applied to steam locomotives in quantity from the
early 20th century, to most steam vehicles, and so stationary steam engines
including power stations.
12. Economizers
Economizer, or in the UK economizer, are mechanical devices intended to reduce
energy consumption, or to perform another useful function like preheating a fluid.
The term economizer is used for other purposes as well. Boiler, power plant, and
heating, ventilating and air conditioning. In boilers, economizer are heat exchange
devices that heat fluids , usually water, up to but not normally beyond the boiling

point of the fluid. Economizers are so named because they can make use of the
enthalpy and improving the boilers efficiency. They are a device fitted to a boiler
which saves energy by using the exhaust gases from the boiler to preheat the cold
water used the fill it (the feed water). Modern day boilers, such as those in cold
fired power stations, are still fitted with economizer which is decedents of Greens
original design. In this context they are turbines before it is pumped to the boilers.
A common application of economizer is steam power plants is to capture the waste
hit from boiler stack gases (flue gas) and transfer thus it to the boiler feed water
thus lowering the needed energy input , in turn reducing the firing rates to
accomplish the rated boiler output . Economizer lower stack temperatures which
may cause condensation of acidic combustion gases and serious equipment
corrosion damage if care is not taken in their design and material selection.
13. Air Preheater
Air preheater is a general term to describe any device designed to heat air before
another process (for example, combustion in a boiler). The purpose of the air
preheater is to recover the heat from the boiler flue gas which increases the thermal
efficiency of the boiler by reducing the useful heat lost in the fuel gas. As a
consequence, the flue gases are also sent to the flue gas stack (or chimney) at a
lower temperature allowing simplified design of the ducting and the flue gas stack.
It also allows control over the temperature of gases leaving the stack.
14. Precipitator
An Electrostatic precipitator (ESP) or electrostatic air cleaner is a particulate
device that removes particles from a flowing gas (such As air) using the force of an
induced electrostatic charge. Electrostatic precipitators are highly efficient
filtration devices, and can easily remove fine particulate matter such as dust and
smoke from the air steam.
ESPs continue to be excellent devices for control of many industrial particulate
emissions, including smoke from electricity-generating utilities (coal and oil fired),
salt cake collection from black liquor boilers in pump mills, and catalyst collection
from fluidized bed catalytic crackers from several hundred thousand ACFM in the
largest coal-fired boiler application.
The original parallel plate-Weighted wire design (described above) has evolved as
more efficient ( and robust) discharge electrode designs were developed, today
focusing on rigid discharge electrodes to which many sharpened spikes are
attached , maximizing corona production. Transformer rectifier systems apply

voltages of 50-100 Kilovolts at relatively high current densities. Modern controls

minimize sparking and prevent arcing, avoiding damage to the components.
Automatic rapping systems and hopper evacuation systems remove the collected
particulate matter while on line allowing ESPs to stay in operation for years at a
time.
15. Fuel gas stack
A Fuel gas stack is a type of chimney, a vertical pipe, channel or similar structure
through which combustion product gases called fuel gases are exhausted to the
outside air. Fuel gases are produced when coal, oil, natural gas, wood or any other
large combustion device. Fuel gas is usually composed of carbon dioxide (CO2)
and water vapor as well as nitrogen and excess oxygen remaining from the intake
combustion air. It also contains a small percentage of pollutants such as
particulates matter, carbon mono oxide, nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides. The flue
gas stacks are often quite tall, up to 400 meters (1300 feet) or more, so as to
disperse the exhaust pollutants over a greater aria and thereby reduce the
concentration of the pollutants to the levels required by governmental
environmental policies and regulations.
When the fuel gases exhausted from stoves, ovens, fireplaces or other small
sources within residential abodes, restaurants , hotels or other stacks are referred to
as chimneys.

ELECTRICITY GENERATION PROCESS

Coal is conveyed (14) from an external stack and ground to a very fine powder by
large metal spheres in the pulverised fuel mill (16). There it is mixed with
preheated air (24) driven by the forced draught fan (20). The hot air-fuel mixture is
forced at high pressure into the boiler where it rapidly ignites. Water of a high
purity flows vertically up the tube-lined walls of the boiler, where it turns into
steam, and is passed to the boiler drum, where steam is separated from any
remaining water. The steam passes through a manifold in the roof of the drum into
the pendant super heater (19) where its temperature and pressure increase rapidly
to around 200 bar and 540C,sufficient to make the tube walls glow a dull red. The
steam is piped to the high pressure turbine (11), the first of a three-stage turbine
process. A steam governor valve (10) allows for both manual control of the turbine
and automatic set-point following. The steam is exhausted from the high pressure
turbine, and reduced in both pressure and temperature, is returned to the boiler
reheater (21). The reheated steam is then passed to the intermediate pressure
turbine (9), and from there passed directly to the low pressure turbine set (6). The
exiting steam, now a little above its boiling point, is brought into thermal contact
with cold water (pumped in from theCooling tower) in the condenser (8), where it
condenses rapidly back into water, creating near vacuum-like conditions inside the
condensor chest. The condensed water is then passed by a feed pump (7) through a
deaerator (12), and pre-warmed, first in a feed heater (13) powered by steam drawn
from the high pressure set, and then in the economiser (23), before being returned
to the boiler drum. The cooling water from the condensor is sprayed inside a
cooling tower (1), creating a highly visible plume of water vapour, before being
pumped back to the condensor (8) in cooling water cycle. The three turbine sets are
sometimes coupled on the same shaft as the three-phase electrical generator (5)
which generates an intermediate level voltage (typically 20-25 kV). This is stepped
up by the unit transformer (4) to a voltage more suitable for transmission (typically
250-500 kV) and is sent out onto the three-phase transmission system (3). Exhaust
gas from the boiler is drawn by the induced draft fan (26) through an electrostatic
precipitator (25) and is then vented through the chimney stack (27).

ELECTRICITY GENERATION PROCESS

(A BASIC OVERVIEW)
HOW ELECTRICITY IS GENERATED?
Thermal power station burns fuel and uses the resultant heat to raise steam which
drives the TURBO GENERATOR. The fuel may be fossil(coal,oil,natural gas) or
it may be fissionable, whichever fuel is used, the objective is same to convert the
mechanical energy into electricity by rotating a magnet inside a set of winding.
COAL TO STAEM
Its other raw materials are air and water. The coal brought to the station by trains
or by other means, travels handling plant by conveyer belts, travels from
pulverizing mills, which grind it as fine as the face powder of size upto 20 microns.
The finely produced coal mixed with preheated air is then blown into the boiler by
a fan called primary air fan where it burns more like a gas than as a solid, in the
conventional domestic or industrial grate, with additional amount of air, called
secondary air supply, by forced draft fan.
As coal is ground so finally the resultant ash is also a fine powder. Some of it binds
together to form pumps, which falls into ash pits at the bottom of the furnace. The
water-quenched ash from the bottom is conveyed to pits for subsequent disposal or
sale. Most of ash, still in fine partical form is carried out of boilers to the
precipitator as dust, where electrodes charged with high voltage electricity trap it.
The dust is then conveyed to water to disposal area or to bunker for sale while the
clean flue gases are passed on through IP fans to be discharged through chimneys.
The heat released from the coal has been absorbed by the many kilometers tubing
which line the boiler walls. Inside the tubes the boiler feed water, which is
transformed by heat into staemat high temperature and pressure.. The steam
superheated in further tubes (superheaters) passes to turbine where it is discharged
through the nozzle on the turbine blades. Just as the energy of wind turns the sail of
the windmill, the energy of steam striking the blade makes the turbine rotate.