Thermal and Hydroelectric Plants

Coal fired (thermal) power plant

Components
• Alternator
• Boiler
• Turbine
Impulse
reaction
• Condenser
• Cooling tower
• Transformer

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 2

 Commonly used Fuels
Fuel type (Solid/Liquid/Gas) Calorific Value (kcal/kg)
1 Lignite 5000
2 Bituminous coal 7600
3 Anthracite coal 8500
4 Heavy Oil 11000
5 Diesel 11000
6 Petrol 11110
7 Natural gas 520 kcal/m3

*One kg Uranium (U235) produces heat equivalent to 4500 tons of high grade coal.
Calorific value- amount of heat produced by complete burning of a unit weight of fuel.

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 3

Selection of site
• Nearness to the Load Centre
• Supply of Water
• Availability of Coal- 20,000 tonnes per day for a 2,000 MW
station
• Land Requirement-For a 2,000 MW plant, the land
requirement may be of the order of 200-250 acres.
• Type of Land- Total load of the order 7 kg per sq. cm
• Transportation Facilities
• Ash Disposal- ash pond
• Distance from Populated Area

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 4

Advantages of coal based power plant

• The Fuel (coal ) is quite cheap.

• Less initial cost require as compared to other generating
stations.
• A thermal power plant can be installed at any place where
the existence of coal and water.
• Fuel ( coal ) can be transported to the plant by rail or road.
• It requires less space as compared to the hydroelectric power
station.
• Power plant depends on coal which is steady in supply.

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 5

Disadvantages
• Huge emission of COx, SOx and NOx in the atmosphere.
• Exhausted gases harms outside environment badly.
• Low overall efficiency.
• Thermal engines requires huge amount of lubricating oil that
is very expensive.
• Need water for cooling purpose.
• Requires comparatively larger duration before it supply
generated power to the grid.
• This type of power station ultimately responsible for raise in
sea water level.

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 6

 Pollutants control

SCR-Selective catalytic reduction

FGD-Flue gas desulfurization

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 7

Pollutant control technologies
• In SCR systems, ammonia vapor is used as the reducing agent and
is injected into the flue gas stream, passing over a catalyst. NOx
emission reductions over 80-90% are achieved. The optimum
temperature is usually between 300°C and 400°C. This is normally
the flue gas temperature at the economizer outlet.
• Electro Static Precipitators (ESP) are used to knock down the
ash particles from the hot flue gas through a high voltage charge
creating a transverse motion of the particles and getting attached
to the collecting electrode.
• Wet scrubbing FGD uses either a slurry of alkaline sorbent,
usually limestone or lime, or seawater to scrub gases; Spray-
dry scrubbing using similar sorbent slurries; Wet sulfuric acid
process recovering sulfur in the form of commercial
quality sulfuric acid; Dry sorbent injection systems that introduce
powdered hydrated lime (or other sorbent material) into exhaust
ducts to eliminate SO2 from process emissions.
2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 8
Supercritical Steam Technology
• In a Supercritical coal plant the working fluid water works as
a supercritical fluid, meaning it is neither a liquid or a gas.
• Critical point is reached under high pressures and temperatures,
specifically at 22 MPa and 374oC.
• The water’s latent heat of vaporization starts to decrease until it
reaches zero at the critical point.
• Amount of energy needed to change the water into steam becomes
less and less.
• Instant water's vaporization phase change.
• This reduces the amount of heat transfer to the water that is
normally needed in a conventional coal plant, therefore,
less coal is used to heat the same amount of water.
• This increases the plant's thermal efficiency by a considerable
amount.

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 9

Efficiency of Steam Power Plants

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 10

Coal-Fired Power Plants
Capacity
Name Location Coal Type Plant type Year
(MW)

Barapukuria Durgapur,
525 Anthracite
Power Station Dinajpur
Rampal
Rampal Ultra Super
Upazila, 1320 Sub-bituminous
Power Station Critical
Bagerhat
Maheshkhali
Matarbari Ultra Super
Upazila, 1200 Sub-bituminous 2024
Power Station Critical
Cox's Bazar
COD
Payra Kalapara
Ultra Super done on
Thermal Upazila, 1320 Sub-bituminous
Critical Dec
Power Plant Patuakhali
08,2020

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 11

Diesel engine plants

• Peak load plant

• Mobile plant
• Standby unit
• Emergency plant
• Nursery station
• Starting station
• Central stations- where the capacity required is small.

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 12

Gas turbine plants
Features
• Low capital cost
• Reliability and flexibility
• Quick starting
• Wide variety of fuels
Components
• Compressor
• Combustion chamber
• Turbine
 Low weight per unit power, suitable for aviation and navigation

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 13

Combined cycle power plant

• Binary and tertiary vapor cycles

• Coupled cycles
• Combined cycle plants
• GT-ST plant
• MHD-ST plant
• Thermionic-ST plant
• Thermoelectric- ST plant

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 14

Characteristics of ideal working fluid
• High critical temperature so that the saturation pressure at
the maximum permissible temperature is relatively low.
• The saturation pressure at the temperature of heat rejection
should be above atmospheric pressure to avoid maintaining
vacuum in the condenser.
• The specific heat of the liquid should be small so that little
heat transfer is required to raise to the boiling point.
• The freezing point should be below room temperature to
avoid solidification when flowing through pipelines.
• Chemically stable, should not contaminate the material.
• It should be non toxic, non corrosive, not excessively
viscous, and low in cost.

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 15

Binary and Tertiary Cycles
• No single fluid meets all the requirements, therefore, two cycles
are used for better efficiency
• Two cycles with different working fluids are coupled in series
• The heat rejected by one being utilized in the other
• Water is better than any other working fluid but at high
temperature aluminum bromide, diphenyl ether and liquid metals
like Hg, sodium, potassium shows better performance.
• Examples: Hg-steam binary cycle, Hg for high temperature
(topping cycle) and steam for low temperature (bottoming cycle).
• Hg-steam-sulphur dioxide tertiary cycles
• Rankine-Rankine coupled cycles is an example of binary vapor
cycle.

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 16

Combined Cycle power plants

• The maximum steam temperature in a power cycle does

not exceed 6000C although the temperature of the coal
furnace is about 13000C.
• By superposing a high temperature power plant as a
topping unit to the steam plant, a higher efficiency can be
achieved.
• Therefore combined cycle, two different thermodynamic
cycles are combined, e.g. Brayton-Rankine cycles.
• Examples: GT-ST combined cycle power plant.

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 17

Advantages of combined cycle

• High overall plant efficiency- exceeding 50%

• Low investment cost- 2/3 of the output is produced in a GT
and only 1/3 is produced in ST, investment cost is 30% less
than those for a conventional steam power plant.
• Small amount of water requirement- 40-50% of the water
required for ST plants.
• Great operational flexibility- start up time reduces
• Phased installation- GT can go into operation while ST is in
construction phase.
• Low environmental impact.

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 18

GT-ST combined cycle plant

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 19

Hydroelectric Power Plant
Impulse turbine
• Pelton wheel
Reaction turbine
• Kaplan turbine
• Francis turbine

Components
• Alternator
• Transformer
• Turbine
• Penstock
• Spillway

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 20

Selection of Hydro Plant

• Availability of water
• Water storage facility
• Water head
• Availability of land
• Transportation facility
• Distance from the load center
• Pond requirement

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 21

Kaptai Lake

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 22

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 23
Advantages of Hydro electric Plant
• Neat and clean as there is no smoke or ash disposal
requirement.
• Low operating and maintenance cost
• It is very reliable, robust and has a longer life 45 to 60 years.
• This plant can start instantly and it can start with fluctuating
load demand.
• The efficiency does not fall at the age of this plant.
• There is no standby loss in this plant.
• At the initial time of construction highly skilled engineers
are required and after that only few experience persons can
run the plant.
• This plant also serves to help in irrigation and Flood control
• Since this plants are located at remote area, land is available
at competitively cheaper rates.
2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 24
Disadvantages

• Requires large land area

• High construction cost due to construction of dam.
• Skilled engineers are required to build this plant
• Long transmission line is required to transmit this
hydroelectric power.
• It doesn't supply constant hydroelectricity due to the
availability of water.
• Pond reserve may be necessary in dry session

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 25

Impulse vs reaction turbine

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 26

Comparison of turbines

Pelton wheel Francis Turbine Kaplan/propeller

Flow Tangential, single Radial, single Axial, single stage,
stage, impulse stage, reaction reaction
Capacity Max 250MW 720MW 225MW
Head 100-1750 m 30-550 m 1.3-77.5 m
RPM 75-1000 30-550 72-600
Efficiency 85-90% 90-94% 85-93%
Specific speed 6-60 50-400 280-1100
No of Jets 1 to 6 Fixed Fixed for propeller,
adjustable for
Kaplan

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 27

Hydroelectric power
Hydraulic Power, P  gqh
Where, g is 9.81 m/s2 (acceleration due to gravity), ρ is
the water density, 1000kg/m3, q is the flow or discharge
rate, m3/sec and h is the water head in m.

The electrical energy in kWh can then be expressed as-

W  9.811000  qht  9.81qht Wh
P  9.81(qh / t )  10 3 kW
Where, t is operating time in hours and η is the efficiency of the turbine generator

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 28

Problems
• An proposed hydroelectric power plant has the following data: available
head = 27m, catchment area 430 sq-km, rainfall = 150cm/year, rainfall
utilized = 65%, penstock efficiency = 95%, Turbine efficiency = 80%,
generator efficiency = 86%, and load factor = 0.45. Calculate the power
developed, suggest suitable turbine, peak load capacity, unit capacity if
two equal units are proposed, and the capacity of the units.
• Solution:
Water available per year = 430×106m2×1.50m×0.65= 419.25×106m3
Water available per second, q =13.29m3
Power developed = 0.95×0.8×0.86×1000×13.29×27×9.81×10-3
kW=2300kW
Maximum (peak) Power = 2300/0.45= 5111 kW
Capacity of each unit = 5111/(2×0.86) = 2971.5kW. Kaplan turbine.

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 29

Problems
• The discharge data from a hydroelectric site is tabulated
below, find the power developed if the head available is 90m
and overall efficiency of generation is 86%.
Month Mean discharge Month Mean discharge
(Million m3) (Million m3)
January 30 July 80
February 25 August 100
March 20 September 110
April 0 October 65
May 10 November 45
June 50 December 30

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 30

Types of Hydroelectric Power Plants

• IMPOUNDMENT

2/7/2024 Professor Dr S M Abdur Razzak, EEE, RUET 31

Types of Hydroelectric Power Plants

• DIVERSION

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Types of Hydroelectric Power Plants

• PUMPED STORAGE
•

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