Steam Power plants

Power plants generate electrical power by using fuels like coal, oil or natural gas. A simple
power plant consists of a boiler, turbine, condenser and a pump. Fuel, burned in the boiler and
superheater, heats the water to generate steam. The steam is then heated to a superheated state
in the superheater. This steam is used to rotate the turbine which powers the generator.
Electrical energy is generated when the generator windings rotate in a strong magnetic field.
After the steam leaves the turbine it is cooled to its liquid state in the condenser. The liquid is
pressurized by the pump prior to going back to the boiler A simple power plant is described by
a Rankine Cycle.

RANKINE CYCLE

Saturated or superheated steam enters the turbine at state 1, where it expands isentropically to
the exit pressure at state 2. The steam is then condensed at constant pressure and temperature to
a saturated liquid, state 3. The heat removed from the steam in the condenser is typically
transferred to the cooling water. The saturated liquid then flows through the pump which
increases the pressure to the boiler pressure (state 4), where the water is first heated to the
saturation temperature, boiled and typically superheated to state 1. Then the whole cycle is
repeated.
 Typical Modifications

REHEAT

When steam leaves the turbine, it is typically wet.

The presense of water causes erosion of the
turbine blades. To prevent this, steam is extracted
from high pressure turbine (state 2), and then it is
reheated in the boiler (state 2') and sent back to
the low pressure turbine.

REGENERATION

Regeneration helps improve the Rankine cycle efficiency by preheating

the feedwater into the boiler. Regeneration can be achieved by open
feedwater heaters or closed feedwater heaters. In open feedwater
heaters, a fraction of the steam exiting a high pressure turbine is mixed
with the feedwater at the same pressure. In closed system, the steam
bled from the turbine is not directly mixed with the feedwater, and
therefore, the two streams can be at different pressures.

COMPONENTS THERMAL EFFICIENCY

• Boiler/Superheater
• Condenser
• Turbine

• Pump
Boiler
Materials

The pressure vessel in a boiler is usually made of steel (or alloy steel), or historically of
wrought iron. Stainless steel is virtually prohibited (by the ASME Boiler Code) for use in
wetted parts of modern boilers, but is used often in superheater sections that will not be
exposed to liquid boiler water. In live steam models, copper or brass is often used because it
is more easily fabricated in smaller size boilers. Historically, copper was often used for
fireboxes (particularly for steam locomotives), because of its better formability and higher
thermal conductivity; however, in more recent times, the high price of copper often makes
this an uneconomic choice and cheaper substitutes (such as steel) are used instead.

For much of the Victorian "age of steam", the only material used for boilermaking was the
highest grade of wrought iron, with assembly by rivetting. This iron was often obtained from
specialist ironworks, such as at Cleator Moor (UK), noted for the high quality of their rolled
plate and its suitability for high-reliability use in critical applications, such as high-pressure
boilers. In the 20th century, design practice instead moved towards the use of steel, which is
stronger and cheaper, with welded construction, which is quicker and requires less labour.

Cast iron may be used for the heating vessel of domestic water heaters. Although such heaters
are usually termed "boilers" in some countries, their purpose is usually to produce hot water,
not steam, and so they run at low pressure and try to avoid actual boiling. The brittleness of
cast iron makes it impractical for high pressure steam boilers.
Diagram of a fire-tube boiler

Diagram of a water-tube boiler.

Fuel

The source of heat for a boiler is combustion of any of several fuels, such as wood, coal, oil,
or natural gas. Electric steam boilers use resistance- or immersion-type heating elements.
Nuclear fission is also used as a heat source for generating steam. Heat recovery steam
generators (HRSGs) use the heat rejected from other processes such as gas turbines.

condenser
condenser, device for reducing a gas or vapour to a liquid. Condensers are employed in
power plants to condense exhaust steam from turbines and in refrigeration plants to condense
refrigerant vapours, such as ammonia and fluorinated hydrocarbons. The petroleum and
chemical industries employ condensers for the condensation of hydrocarbons and other
chemical vapours. In distilling operations, the device in which the vapour is transformed to a
liquid state is called a condenser.

All condensers operate by removing heat from the gas or vapour; once sufficient heat is
eliminated, liquefaction occurs. For some applications, all that is necessary is to pass the gas
through a long tube (usually arranged in a coil or other compact shape) to permit heat to
escape into the surrounding air. A heat-conductive metal, such as copper, is commonly used
to transport the vapour. A condenser’s efficiency is often enhanced by attaching fins (i.e., flat
sheets of conductive metal) to the tubing to accelerate heat removal. Commonly, such
condensers employ fans to force air through the fins and carry the heat away. In many cases,
large condensers for industrial applications use water or some other liquid in place of air to
achieve heat removal.

Turbine

A steam turbine with the case opened.

A turbine is a rotary engine that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful
work.

The simplest turbines have one moving part, a rotor assembly, which is a shaft or drum with
blades attached. Moving fluid acts on the blades, or the blades react to the flow, so that they
move and impart rotational energy to the rotor. Early turbine examples are windmills and
water wheels.

Gas, steam, and water turbines usually have a casing around the blades that contains and
controls the working fluid. Credit for invention of the steam turbine is given both to the
British Engineer Sir Charles Parsons (1854–1931), for invention of the reaction turbine and
to Swedish Engineer Gustaf de Laval (1845–1913), for invention of the impulse turbine.
Modern steam turbines frequently employ both reaction and impulse in the same unit,
typically varying the degree of reaction and impulse from the blade root to its periphery.
A device similar to a turbine but operating in reverse, i.e., driven, is a compressor or pump.
The axial compressor in many gas turbine engines is a common example. Here again, both
reaction and impulse are employed and again, in modern axial compressors, the degree of
reaction and impulse will typically vary from the blade root to its periphery.

Claude Burdin coined the term from the Latin turbo, or vortex, during an 1828 engineering
competition. Benoit Fourneyron, a student of Claude Burdin, built the first practical water
turbine.

Pump
A pump is a device used to move fluids, such as liquids, gases or slurries.

A pump displaces a volume by physical or mechanical action. Pumps fall into five major
groups: direct lift, displacement, velocity, buoyancy and gravity pumps.[1] Their names
describe the method for moving a fluid.