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What is the Thermal Power Plant?

Answer: Thermal Power Plant | Applications of steam power plant

● Electrical power is produced in a steam power plant with the help of coal. It is commonly used
in India. These plants are by capacity range of 10 MW to higher.

● These plants are located where fuel transportation facility is available and availability of water also must be there.

● Steam power plants using steam basically works on Rankine cycle. However, in actual power plant, there are lot of improvements and modifications has been done on the Rankine cycle for better fuel economy and improvements in thermal efficiency.

The function of main components of thermal power plant are explain below :

1. Boiler : A boiler is a closed vessel in which water or other fluid is heated. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating application including boiler based
power generation.

2. Turbine : A turbine is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from fluid flow and converts it into useful work. A turbine is a turbo machine with at least one moving part called a rotor or shaft assembly, which is a shaft or drum with blades attached. Moving fluid act on the blades so that they move and impart rotational energy to the rotor.

3. Condenser : A condenser is a device or unit used to condense a substance from its gaseous to its liquid state, typically by cooling it. Condensers are typically heat exchanger which have various designs and come in many sizes ranging from rather small to very large industrial scale units used in plant processes.

4. Feed pump : The feed pump is a pump which is used to deliver feed water to the boiler. It is desirable that the quantity of water supplied should be at least equal to that evaporated and supplied to the engine.

5. Economiser : In boilers, economisers are heat exchanging devices that heat fluids, usually water, up to but not normally beyond the boiling point of that fluid. Economizers are so named because they can make use of the enthalpy in fluid streams that are hot, but not hot enough to be used in a boiler, thereby recovering more useful enthalpy and improving the boiler’s efficiency.

6. Air preheater : An air preheater is a general term to describe any device designed to heat the air before process (for example, combustion in a boiler) with the primary objective of increasing the thermal efficiency of the process.

The applications of steam power plant are as follows :

1. Condenser is used in refrigerator and air conditioner.

2. Boiler are used for steam generation like in power plant.

3. Economiser is used at power plant to increase the efficiency.

4. Turbine is used for power generation.

5. Air preheater is used to raise the temperature of air by the hot flue gases.