Lakvijaya Power Plant

Field Visit report

Name

: M.G.C.I. Siriwardana

Index No

: 110544F

Department : EE
Date of sub

: 09/11/2015

Introduction

Lakvijaya power plant also known as Norochcholei power plant is situated in Narakkalliya,
Norochcholai on the southern end of Kalpitiya peninsula which is 12km away from Palavi
junction in Puttalam-Kalpitiya road. . It is Sri Lankas first ever coal power station and the
largest power station.
At the time we visited to the power plant, the unit 1 and unit 2 was operated by CEB and unit 3
was operated by the Chinese company. All the three units are able to supply more than 50% of
the national demand.
Unit price of electricity producing at the Lakvijaya power station is about Rs. 9.00 and daily
average energy produced by one unit is between 6 GWh ad 6.3 GWh.
Butuminous coal used as the fuel and the auto diesel are used at the start up.
Under the first phase of the project, as a test run the power plant provide around 300 MW to the
national grid which is 17% of the consumer requirement. The project was commissioned on
March 2011. The cost of the plant is US$ 455 million and annual expected energy is 1.7 TWh.
The plant is connected to Veyangoda grid substation through a 220 kV double circuit
transmission line of 115 km.
The second phase generates another 600 MW to the national grid. It was commenced on October
2010 with two generating units. This project is fully commissioned by 2014. A 220 kV double
circuit transmission line of 95 km from the power station to Anuradhapura Grid Substation and a
Grid substation at Chilaw are being constructed under phase two. After the completion on the

latter stages, it surpassed all power stations and rank as the largest power producing body in the
country, at 900 MW.
Electrical system
Generating voltage is 20 kV and this is connected to the ring type three busbars in GIS. The main
transformer step up 22 kV voltage to 220 kV voltage. Internal consumption of the power plant is
25 MW. There are 20 kV/ 6 kV start up transformers and 220 kV / 6 kV start up stand by
transformer. Stator of the transformer is cooled by demineralized water and the rotor is cooled
by Hydrogen.
Emergency power sources

On-site power (three units back up each other)

Outside power (SST/ 33 kV feeder)
Battery bank
Emergency diesel Generator (642 kW)
If the transmission line failure occurred, the power plant can be shut down with out any
problem, because of this diesel generartor.

Steam Turbine
Each unit contains a turbine rotating at 3000rpm and delivering 300 MW power. Each turbine is
mainly divided in to 3 parts. They are high pressure turbine, intermediate pressure turbine and
low pressure turbine. The high pressure turbine and intermediate pressure turbine are connected
in same shaft but low pressure turbine is connected in separately. From these, LP turbine is larger
in size compared to the HP turbine and IP turbines, because when the pressure of steam is
reduced the volume of the steam is too gets increase.
Boiler
Boiler in the lakvijaya power plant is the largest boiler in the Sri Lanka. This is inverted u type
natural circulation balance draft subcritical boiler. This boiler consists with burners, super
heaters, re heaters, economizer and air pre heater. Two induced draft fans are used to maintain

negative pressure inside boiler and it helps to flue gas to go out inside the boiler easily. Another
booster fan is also used to support this process.
Main components of the boiler section

Water and steam circulation system

Water walls
Super heater
Re-heater
Oil and coal combustion system
Coal pulverization
Light diesel firing in initial
Ash handling system
Electro static precipitator
Ash pumping

Air supply system

Force draft fans
Induce draft fans
Primary air fans
Air pre-heater

Air is used to combustion process and coal transferring process. Air fans are used to obtain air
from the atmospheric air. Three types of fans are used in boiler system. They are;

Forced draft fan

Induced draft fan
Primary air fans

There are air pre heaters to heat the primary air which is used for coal transportation and
secondary air which is used to burning proccess. Air pre heaters recover the heat from boiler flue
gas and increase the thermal efficiency of the boiler by reducing the useful heat loss in the flue
gas.
Steam generation process

Water passes through the water walls of the furnace and goes to the boiler drum. At the boiler
drum, liquid water and steam is separated. The steam is sent to the super heaters to produce super
heated steam. A portion of liquid water is used for continuous blow down of the boiler drum and
other portion is re-circulated through the water walls of the boiler.
There is a steam loss because of the continuous blow down of the boiler drum. That loss is fixed
by feeding the makeup water to the drum. Makeup water is fed through the economizer. At the
economizer the flue gas is used to heat the makeup water. It increases the boiler efficiency.
Steam drum is one of the most important equipment which always highly protected as it is an
essential thing to generate high quality steam. Economizer is used to increase the financial
benefit and efficiency of the steam process. It recovers the heat from flue gas and heat the feed
water before enters to the boiler drum.
Primary air and secondary air
Primary air is obtained from the atmosphere using two 1.2 MW primary air supply fans. This air
is used to send coal particles in to the furnace in the boiler. The portion of primary air is sent
through the air pre heater to increase temperature of air and then this hot primary air and cold
primary air are mixed to get required temperature because it will increase efficiency of burning
process. Secondary air is get using two forced draft fans to supply Oxygen for coal burning
process. This secondary air also is heated using air pre heater.
Air pre heater
The exhaust flu gas has high amount of heat there for this heat is used to increase temperature of
primary air and secondary air because it increases the efficiency of coal burning process.
Therefore air pre heater is used to exchange heat from flue gas to the primary and secondary air.
There is a 11 kw motor to rotate the air pre heater to 1 rpm. The inlet temperature of flu gas in
the air pre heater is approximately 353 C and outlet temperature is 121 C. The inlet
temperature of primary and secondary air is approximately 31 C and outlet temperature of
primary is approximately 333 C and outlet temperature of secondary is approximately 338 C.

Furnace
Temperature of the furnace is always maintained below the 1200 C because it reduces
NOx formation. The firing system in the furnace is called circular firing system.
Main feature of the firing system;

Stable ignition and combustion

Low NOx emission
Uniform heat absorption

Ash handling process

Flue gas contains considerable amount of fly ash. If it is directly released to the atmosphere, it
can cause serious damage to the plantation of the area. And also fly ash cause air pollution.
Therefore fly ash is removed from the flue gas before it released to the atmosphere in LVPS.
Electro static precipitators (ESP) are used to remove fly ash from flue gas.