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FUNDAMENTALS OF THERMAL POWER GENERATION

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 International Journal of Engineering Applied Sciences and Technology, 2020
Vol. 5, Issue 6, ISSN No. 2455-2143, Pages 111-115
Published Online October 2020 in IJEAST (http://www.ijeast.com)

FUNDAMENTALS OF THERMAL POWER

GENERATION
Mohammed Elamin
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University,
Raleigh, NC 27695, United States

environments. However, people are becoming more

Abstract - This review article discusses the concern about climate change and the excessive
different aspects of thermal power generation pollution and smoke produced from thermal power
including plant components, engine types and the plants.
fundamental of thermodynamics with respect to
power generation. The main components of The amount of CO2 emissions from the burned fuel
thermal power plants and their role in the plays a vital role in the quality or air and temperature
operation of the power plant are discussed. due to global warming [1-3].
Understanding the main concepts of Rankine cycle,
thermodynamics, and heat transfer laws is vital in II. THERMAL POWER PLANTS
power generation engineering. The second part of COMPONENTS
this review article investigated the Rankine cycle
process, heat transfer mechanisms in all of the Thermal power plants consist of many important
main components of the thermal power plant. The components. Optimizing the operation of every single
use of internal combustion engines such as diesel component would result in a huge improvement of the
engine in power generation is further studied. The entire power plant. As illustrated in Fig.1, these
aim of this research is to provide a description of components include Turbine units, condensers unit,
the thermal power generation methods in an easily cooling tower units, pumps, chemical treatment units,
digestible form, and to conduct a comparison boiler and superheater units, generator and
between them with a particular focus on the transformers unit, conveyors, electrostatic
thermal efficiency, power range, and the type of precipitators, and pulverizers. More details and the
fuel. role of these components is explained in the next
section.
I. INTRODUCTION
Condenser:
Steam is the prime mover of thermal power plants. The
water comes from an external source and the passes Condenser is a heat exchanger device (shell and tube)
through a chemical treatment unit. Chemicals are that cools the extracted steam from both high pressure
added to purify the water and to avoid corrosion and and lower pressure turbines using the water from the
chemical deposition in the plant pipes. The water is cooling tower unit. Condensers are typically placed at
heated in the boiler and superheater unit until it the exit of the turbine units. The pressure remains the
becomes a superheated steam. This steam, due to the same in the condensing process while the form of
pressure difference, spins the turbine driving the steam changes from gas to liquid.
power generator.
Smoke stack:
The steam is then condensed in the condenser-cooling The role of smoke stacks is to ventilate the boiler
tower unit and cycles back in the plant. Using different chamber and to push the exhaust gas out of the unit.
fuel source results in a different overall performance
of the plant. The most common fuels used are coal and Coal conveyor:
kerosene. This belt unit is to facilitate the delivery of the fuel
tanks and coal to the furnace.
In addition to electrical power generation, thermal
power plants are utilized in different industries for the
purpose of heating, especially in the cold

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 International Journal of Engineering Applied Sciences and Technology, 2020
Vol. 5, Issue 6, ISSN No. 2455-2143, Pages 111-115
Published Online October 2020 in IJEAST (http://www.ijeast.com)

Pulveriser: There are different types of cooling towers such as

This is used to process the coal fuel before entering the natural draft cooling towers and mechanical draft
boiler unit. cooling towers. The performance of the cooling tower
is governing by the ambient wet bulb temperature, air
Boiler: pressure, and most importantly water quality. The role
This is also a heat exchanger unit. The fuel is burned, of cooling towers is shown in Fig.2.
and the water passes through steel pipes. The boiler
heats up the water to a certain temperature before The water is sprayed by spray nozzles and splash bars.
entering the superheater unit. Some plants use multiple The fan circulates the air in the case of mechanical
boiler units which is called regenerative power plants. draft cooling towers. Whereas in natural draft cooling
towers, air circulation is done naturally by wind
Electrostatic precipitator: currents.
This is basically an advanced dust removal. It creates
an electric field whereby the exhaust chemical
particles are collected.

Generator:
The generator is the main source of the output
electrical power of the plant. It is an electromechanical
equipment that converts the kinetic energy of the
turbine blades into power.

Economizer:
This is a second heating stage. The economizer simply
utilizes the heat of the exhaust gases for a second
heating round.

Fig..2: Cooling tower system

III. BASIC CONCEPTS IN THERMAL

POWER GENERATION

Fig.1: Power plant components

Thermal power plant generally is based on ideal
Cooling Towers: Rankine cycle concept. If the working fluid passes
through the various components of the simple vapor
A cooling tower is a heat exchanger device that power cycle without irreversibility, frictional pressure
supplies the conder unit with a relatively cold water drops would be absent from the boiler and condenser,
and absorbs the heat of the steam. Cooling towers are and the working fluid would flow through these
used to reject heat from water to the atmosphere air by components at constant pressure [4]. Also, in the
means of heat and mass transfer. Cooling towers absence of irreversibility and heat transfer with the
consist of exhaust fans, fins, frame, fills, cold water surroundings, the processes through the turbine and
basin and water pipes. pump would be isentropic.

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 International Journal of Engineering Applied Sciences and Technology, 2020
Vol. 5, Issue 6, ISSN No. 2455-2143, Pages 111-115
Published Online October 2020 in IJEAST (http://www.ijeast.com)

A cycle adhering to these idealizations is the ideal of cooling, which is also used in car engines, is called
Rankine cycle shown in Fig. 3. dry cooling. Several power plants in the world,
We see that the working fluid undergoes the following including some in the United States, use dry cooling to
series of internally reversible processes: conserve water.
Process 1-2: Isentropic compression in a pump.
Process 2-3: Constant pressure heat addition in a Diesel power plants
boiler.
Process 3-4: Isentropic expansion in a turbine. The diesel generator [6] has been seen to be the choice
Process 4-1: Constant pressure heat rejection in a of many of the larger companies as it is well suited for
condenser. industrial use (Fig.4). A major discouraging factor for
its use in terms of the retail market has been the fact
Water enters the pump at state 1 as saturated liquid and that it can be rather noisy, but this has been reduced
is compressed isentropically to the operating pressure greatly from the first diesel generators and is now
of the boiler. The water temperature increases almost comparable to the gasoline generators. These
somewhat during this isentropic compression process generators also offer other perks such as increase fuel
due to a slight decrease in the specific volume of economy and reduced maintenance costs which can
water. The vertical distance between states 1 and 2 on explain their popularity in industrial applications [5].
the T-s diagram is greatly exaggerated for clarity.

Water enters the boiler as a compressed liquid at state

2 and leaves as a superheated vapor at state 3. The
boiler is basically a large heat exchanger where the
heat originating from combustion gases, nuclear
reactors, or other sources is transferred to the water
essentially at constant pressure. The boiler, together
with the section where the steam is superheated (the
superheater), is often called the steam generator.

Fig.4: schematic of the diesel power plant [6]

The power generation applications of piston engines

are enormously varied. Small units can be used for
standby power or for combined heat, and power in 60
Fig.3: Ideal Rankine cycle diagram homes and offices. Larger standby units are often used
in situations where a continuous supply of power is
The superheated vapor at state 3 enters the turbine, critical; in hospitals or to support highly sensitive
where it expands isentropically and produces work by computer installations such as air traffic control [4].
rotating the shaft connected to an electric generator.
The pressure and the temperature of steam drop during Many commercial and industrial facilities use
this process to the values at state 4, where steam enters medium-sized piston engine- based combined heat and
the condenser. At this state, steam is usually a power units for base-load power generation. Large
saturated liquid–vapor mixture with a high quality. engines, meanwhile, can be used for baseload, grid-
Steam is condensed at constant pressure in the connected power generation while smaller units form
condenser, which is basically a large heat exchanger, one of the main sources of base load power to isolated
by rejecting heat to a cooling medium such as a lake, communities with no access to an electricity grid.
a river, or the atmosphere. Steam leaves the condenser
as saturated liquid and enters the pump, completing the Piston engines used for power generation are almost
cycle [4]. In areas where water is precious, the power exclusively derived from engines designed for motive
plants are cooled by air instead of water. This method applications. Smaller units are normally based on car

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 International Journal of Engineering Applied Sciences and Technology, 2020
Vol. 5, Issue 6, ISSN No. 2455-2143, Pages 111-115
Published Online October 2020 in IJEAST (http://www.ijeast.com)

or truck engines while the larger engines are based on

locomotive or marine engines. Performance of these
engines varies. Smaller engines are usually cheap
because they are mass produced but they have
relatively low efficiencies and short lives. Larger
engines tend to be more expensive, but they will
operate for much longer [7-9].

The packaged combination of a diesel engine, a

generator, and various ancillary devices such as base,
canopy, sound attenuation, control systems, circuit
breakers, jacket water heaters, starting systems etc, is
referred to as a generating set or a gen set for short.

While the larger industrial generators can range from

8 to 30 kVA for homes, small shops & offices up to
2,000 kVA used for large office complexes, factories.
A 2,000 kVA set can be housed in a 40ft ISO container
and be fully packaged and portable. Sizes up to about Fig.6: Propulsions system and generators [10]
5 MW are used for small power stations and these may
use from one to 20 units [4]. In these larger sizes the Generating sets are selected based on the load they are
engine and generator are brought to site separately and intended to supply power for, taking into account the
assembled along with ancillary equipment. type of load, i.e. emergency or for continuous power,
and the size of the load, and size of any motors to be
Diesel generators, sometimes as small as 250 kVA are started which is normally the critical parameter [4].
widely used not only for emergency power, but also Internal combustion engines of many types are used
many have a secondary function of feeding power to for stationary power generation in a wide variety of
utility grids either during peak periods, or periods services: central stations, oil fields, pipelines, sewage
when there is a shortage of large power generators. disposal, and commercial, institutional, and military
Ships often also employ diesel generators, sometimes bases.
not only to provide auxiliary power for lights, fans,
and winches, etc. but also indirectly for main As shown in Fig. 6, the compression ignition engines
propulsion as explained in [10]. serve in steam stations to supply auxiliary power and
in some industrial plants and institutional as
With electric propulsion (Fig.5) the generators can be emergency stand-by sources of energy in the event of
placed in a convenient position, to allow more cargo main power-supply failure. In some smaller systems
to be carried. Electric drives for ships were developed I.C engines work with steam units to supply the peak-
prior to WW I. Electric drives were specified in many load demands on the plant [11].
warships built during WW II because manufacturing
capacity for large reduction gears was in short supply,
compared to capacity for manufacture of electrical
equipment. Such a diesel-electric arrangement is also
used in some very large land vehicles.

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 International Journal of Engineering Applied Sciences and Technology, 2020
Vol. 5, Issue 6, ISSN No. 2455-2143, Pages 111-115
Published Online October 2020 in IJEAST (http://www.ijeast.com)

4. Mahmoud, D., Eesa, M.(2010). Comparison

between Mechanical Power Generation Plants
(M.Sc. Thesis)
5. Vincent, E. T. (1961). U.S. Patent No. 3,007,302.
Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office.
6. Kanogˇlu, M., Işık, S. K., & Abuşogˇlu, A. (2005).
Performance characteristics of a diesel engine
power plant. Energy Conversion and
Management, 46(11-12), 1692-1702.
7. Dzida, M. (2009). On the possible increasing of
efficiency of ship power plant with the system
combined of marine diesel engine, gas turbine and
steam turbine, at the main engine-steam turbine
mode of cooperation. Polish Maritime
Research, 16(1), 47-52.
Fig.6: Diesel Engine and Compression Engine [11] 8. Solantausta, Y., Nylund, N. O., Westerholm, M.,
Koljonen, T., & Oasmaa, A. (1993). Wood-
IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION pyrolysis oil as fuel in a diesel-power
plant. Bioresource Technology, 46(1-2), 177-188.
Part of the most important concepts in thermal power 9. Buriakovskyi, S., Liubarskyi, B., Maslii, A.,
generation have been investigated in this review Pomazan, D., & Tavrina, T. (2020). Research of a
article. Furthermore, the main components of thermal Hybrid Diesel Locomotive Power Plant Based on
power plants and their role in the operation of the a Free-Piston Engine. Communications-Scientific
power plant were investigated. The fundamentals of letters of the University of Zilina, 22(3), 103-109.
Rankine cycle, thermodynamics and heat transfer laws 10. Geertsma, R. D., Negenborn, R. R., Visser, K., &
are critical in thermal power generation. Therefore, a Hopman, J. J. (2017).
good part of this review article has been dedicated to Design and control of hybrid power and propulsion
Rankine cycles, heat transfer mechanisms in the main systems for smart ships: A review of
components of the thermal power plant. The role of developments. Applied Energy, 194, 30-54.
internal combustion engines such as diesel engine was 11. Graves, H., Le Pape, Y., Naus, D., Rashid, J.,
further studied. The aim of this research was to suggest Saouma, V., Sheikh, A., & Wall, J. (2014).
a description of these power generation methods in an Expanded material degradation assessment
easily understandable form, and to make a comparison (EMDA), Volume 4: Aging of concrete. Technical
between them especially the thermal efficiency, power Rep. NUREG/CR-7153, ORNL/TM-2011/545,
range, and the type of fuel. United State Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
Rockville, MD.
V. REFERENCES

1. Mittal, M. L., Sharma, C., & Singh, R. (2012,

August). Estimates of emissions from coal fired
thermal power plants in India. In 2012
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2. Giuliano, S., Buck, R., & Eguiguren, S. (2011).
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