| Ever have a small child threaten to hold his breath until he passes out and he actually managed to do it? It’s not that unusual. And if his body were prevented from acting in self preservation, that is, taking in breaths while he was unconscious, leading to his eventual awakening, he would die. While the human body can survive about a month without eating and three days without water, under normal conditions it can survive only a matter of minutes without breathing. Power plants, too, require oxygen to function, and this process is called combustion.
Human lungs, along with the diaphragm which works to expand and release the lung cavities, enable our bodies to breathe in air, then expel the waste product, carbon dioxide. Oxygen is needed to metabolize, that is burn, our food, enabling the food cells’ energy to be absorbed by our bodies and converted into energy to live. Like us, coal power plants need to breathe in oxygen in order to convert coal’s latent energy into a usable form. Previously we learned how coal is fed to a coal mill where it is pulverized into a fine powder. This powder is then sucked out of the mill by the exhauster and blown through a serpentine path of pipes leading to the burners on the furnace. The burners will then act upon the coal, combining it with the oxygen in our atmosphere to create a chemical reaction capable of releasing coal’s energy in the form of heat. All this activity looks to a bystander like a massive, sustained fire in the furnace. See Figure l.
Figure 1 – Coal Power Plant Combustion The boiler is contained within the furnace and is situated so it is exposed to fire from the combustion process. Heat energy from the fire transfers into the water in the boiler, much like when you boil water for tea in a kettle on your stovetop. If you’ve ever boiled water, you know that once it gets hot enough it will turn into steam, and the same for our furnace boiler. The steam emitting from the boiler will cause a turbine-generator to spin, and the end result will be electricity for our use. In the simple diagram of Figure 1, waste products from the combustion process, like carbon dioxide, go up the smoke stack and are released into the atmosphere. Incidentally, this is the same type of carbon dioxide that we exhale from our bodies when we breathe. Please keep in mind that Figure 1 is a very simplified diagram. In reality waste products leaving the furnace go through various pollution control devices where most pollutants are removed before they reach the smoke stack. These details, and many more, are the type of information that would be covered during my training seminar, Coal Power Plant Fundamentals. Next time we’ll learn how the heat energy in steam is converted into mechanical energy capable of spinning a turbine generator to make electricity.
_____________________________________________
|
Posts Tagged ‘furnace’
Coal Power Plant Fundamentals – Combustion
Sunday, February 13th, 2011
Coal Power Plant Fundamentals – Feeding The Furnace
Sunday, February 6th, 2011| Today we’ll continue our discussion of coal’s journey through a power plant. Keep in mind that the material presented in this series of blogs is meant to be a primer. It is a simplification of what actually goes on. My training seminars go into much more depth.
Now imagine a five course meal spread out on the table before you. You load up your plate and pack a forkful of food into your mouth. You instinctively chew, getting the digestive process underway and making it easier to swallow. Power plants approach their consumption of coal in much the same way. Last time we talked about handling the coal and filling up silos for short term storage within the power plant building. The coal silo is analogous to a dinner plate, and the furnace, which heats up the boiler water to make steam for the turbine, acts very much like a diner’s stomach. As for the fork and your teeth, there are a couple of machines within power plants which mimic their behavior. They’re called the coal feeder and coal mill. The coal feeder does as its name implies, it systematically feeds a measured amount of coal to the coal mill. The coal mill, also known as a pulverizer, then grinds the coal to make it easier for the furnace to burn it. Let’s take a look at Figure 1 below. At the top of the configuration is the coal silo, which is fully open at the bottom. Gravity draws the coal within the silo downward, facilitating the coal’s dropping through the opening into a chute, on its way to the coal feeder. The coal from the silo spills into little buckets on a wheel within the feeder, and as the wheel turns, the coal spills out and falls down into another chute leading to the mill.
Figure 1 – Feeding Coal To A Power Plant Furnace Now you could have the coal spill down a chute directly from the silo into the mill, bypassing the coal feeder entirely, but that’s really not a good idea. Just think how difficult it would be to chew if you tried to stuff an entire plate of food into your mouth at once. Just as your mouth requires to be fed in mouth-sized amounts, the coal mill must be fed coal in a size that it can handle. It’s the job of the spinning wheel inside the coal feeder to keep coal flowing in measured amounts to the mill. You see, the wheel is attached to a variable speed motor, and depending on how quickly the furnace needs to be fed, the wheel will either turn faster or slower. Once inside the mill, the coal is ground up before moving on to the furnace. The coal mill contains massive steel parts capable of pulverizing chunks of coal into a fine black powder. This pulverized coal is then propelled by means of an exhauster towards the burners. The exhauster sits next to the coal mill and both are often driven by the same electric motor. The exhauster is connected to the top of the mill by a pipe, and another pipe connects the exhauster to burners on the furnace. The exhauster acts like a big vacuum cleaner, sucking coal powder out of the mill, then blowing it through pipes leading to the burners. Finally, the powder ignites within the furnace, heating the water inside the boiler. Next time we’ll learn about the combustion process in the power plant furnace. _____________________________________________ |
Thermodynamics In Mechanical Engineering, Part II, Power Cycles
Sunday, December 13th, 2009|
Last time we talked about some general concepts in an area of mechanical engineering known as thermodynamics. In this week’s article we’ll narrow our focus a bit to look at a part of thermodynamics that deals with power cycles. One mammoth example of a power cycle can be found in a coal-fired power plant. You can’t help but notice these plants with their massive buildings, mountains of coal, and tall smoke stacks. They’ve been getting a lot of negative press lately and are a central focus of the debate on global warming, but most people have no idea what’s going on inside of them. Let’s take a peek.
Figure 1 – A Coal-Fired Power Plant A power plant has one basic function, to convert the chemical energy in coal into the electrical energy that we use in our modern lives, and it’s a power cycle that is at the heart of this conversion process. The most basic power cycle in this instance would include a boiler, steam turbine, condenser, and a pump (see Figure 2 below).
Figure 2 – A Basic Power Cycle When the coal is burned in the power plant furnace, its chemical energy is turned into heat energy. This heat energy and the boiler are enclosed by the furnace so the boiler can more efficiently absorb the heat energy to make steam. A pipe carries the steam from the boiler to a steam turbine. Nozzles in the steam turbine convert the heat energy of the steam into kinetic energy, making the steam pick up speed as it leaves the nozzles. The fast moving steam transfers its kinetic energy to the turbine blades, causing the turbine to spin, much like a windmill (see Figure 3 below).
Figure 3 – The Inner Workings of a Steam Turbine The spinning turbine is connected by a shaft to a generator. The turbine works to spin the generator and thus produces electricity. After the energy in the steam is used by the turbine, it goes to the condenser, whose job it is to convert the steam back into water. To accomplish this, the condenser uses cold water, say from a nearby lake or river, to cool the steam down until it converts from a gas back to a liquid, that is, water. This is why power plants are normally found adjacent to a body of water. After things are cooled down, the pump gets to work, pushing the condensed water back into the boiler where it is once again turned into steam. This power cycle keeps repeating itself as long as there is coal being burned in the furnace, the plant equipment is functioning properly, and electrical energy flows out of the power plant. Thermodynamics sets up an energy accounting system that enables mechanical engineers to design and analyze power cycles to make sure they are safe, reliable, efficient, and economical. When all is said and done, a properly designed power cycle transfers as much heat energy as possible from the burning coal on one end of the cycle to meet the requirements for electrical power on the other end of the cycle. As was mentioned in last week’s blog, nothing is 100% efficient. Next time we’ll learn about being cool. No, I’m not going to talk about the latest cell phone gadget or who’s connected on Facebook. We’ll be covering refrigeration cycles. _________________________________________________________________ |
