Thermal Power Plants

In today's modern world, all societies are involved to various degrees with technological breakthroughs that are attempting to make our lives more productive and more comfortable. These technologies include sophisticated electronic devices, the most prominent of which are computer systems. Many of the systems in our modern world depend on a reliable and relatively inexpensive energy source-electricity. In fact, inexpensive and reliable electricity is critical to the sustained economic growth and security of the United States and of the rest of the world.

For over three decades, the Karnataka power corporation has been a prime mover and catalyst behind the key power sector reforms in state- measures that have spiraled steady growth witnessed in both industrial and economic areas. Right from the year of inception, in 1970, KPCL sets its sight on “growth from within” meeting growing industry needs and reaching out to touch the lives of the common man, in more ways than one.
KPCL today has an installed capacity of 5975.91 MW of hydel, thermal, solar and wind energy, with 9500 MW in the pipeline. The 1720 MW Raichur Thermal Power station located in Raichur dist is accredited with ISO 14001-2004 certification for its environment protection measures. The gears of enterprise in Karnataka powered nascent industrial activity as early as the year 1800, when the first sugar unit was set up. In 1902, Karnataka recorded another “mega watt sized project” – Asia’s first Hydro Electric Power Station in Shivanasamudram, on the banks of river Cauvery, and Karnataka had the longest transmission line in the world in 1902 which conversing a distance of 147 km from shivanasamudra to KGF.

Industrial control systems are nowadays exposed in environments with rapid and unstable parameter changes and uses measuring equipments with critical output sensitivity. In the case of thermal gas analyzer, measurement errors are contributed by temperature, gas flow, and pressure. Error compensation is a key problem for these control systems. In recent years, it has been proven in the literature that artificial neural network (ANN) is a reliable and low cost solution to manage errors. Among all the algorithms of ANN, the back propagation is commonly used because of its simplicity and learning methodology is easy to realize. However, it has two notable drawbacks: (a) it is likely to run into local minimum, and (b) convergence is slow. Thermal conductivity gas analyzer often works in adverse surroundings, which requires fast and accurate measurements. Therefore, a strong learning network is needed. This paper proposes a novel thermal gas analyzer using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system. The effectiveness and validity of the proposed method is verified by simulation studies using MATLAB. Fuzzy membership rules are created to allow regulation of learning parameters. Further, the fuzzy adaptive network model is constructed to train large data samples while the high precision compensation of sensor error is realized by the improved flow. Simulation results reveal that the convergence speed and output accuracy is improved and the learning parameters in thermal gas analyzer are automatically corrected by the proposed method in comparison with the back propagation algorithm of artificial neural network.

In many countries throughout the world, fly and bottom ashes originating from coal-fired thermal power plants are declared as wastes requiring special care during reuse and disposal. In this regard, a number of toxicity tests have been developed to assess the metal leaching potential of ash residues. In this study, fly ash samples obtained from the Ç atalagzı thermal power plant, located on the northwestern coast of Turkey, were subjected to toxicity tests such as the extraction (EP) and toxicity characteristic leaching (TCLP) procedures of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), and the so-called Method A extraction procedure of the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM). The results observed for the extracts were compared with each other and the selected tests were evaluated in terms of their use in representing leaching under natural field conditions.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2020 The Authors. Energy Science & Engineering published by the Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran

In the face of a continuing attention to operations and maintenance costs at nuclear power plants, the future of the industry depends largely upon increasing plant availability and improving operating efficiency. The success in achieving these objectives is dependent upon the success of each plant's equipment maintenance program. Preventing the introduction of foreign materials into a nuclear power plant system or component requires a careful, thoughtful, and professional approach by all site personnel. This paper describes a proactive approach to prevent the introduction of foreign material into systems and components, by providing an overview of technical considerations required to develop, implement, and manage a foreign material exclusion program at CNE Cernavoda Unit 1&2 Nuclear Power Station. It is also described an example of Foreign Material Intrusion which happened during the 2003 planned maintenance outage at Cemavoda Unit #1. This paper also defines personnel responsibilities and key nomenclature and a means for evaluating prospective work tasks and activities against standardized criteria, in order to identify the appropriate level of the required FME controls.

Biomass co-firing with lignite represents an attractive solution for operating lignite-fired thermal power plants (TPP) with the dual advantage of using local renewable resources and  imultaneously reducing emissions. The subject of this study is technical and environmental investigation of the feasibility of the cofiring of Soma lignite with some dried agricultural residues in the Soma thermal power plant from the exergy analysis perspective, using THERMOFLEX simulation software. The use of biomass cofiring with poor quality coal could allow Turkey to comply with Kyoto commitments while benefiting from using indigenous fuel resources and reducing biomass waste disposal problems. Two technologies are considered; (1) direct cofiring, in which biomass is mixed with lignite in the same mill and fed into the boiler furnace and (2) parallel cofiring method, in which biomass is fired in a separate circulating fluidized bed boiler and produced steam is supplemented into the steam network of the power plant. The investigations reveal that both direct and parallel co-firing of the biomass could result in a significant decrease in fuel consumption, emissions and exergy destruction and a slight increase in the exergy efficiency of the Soma TPP. Olive waste, in particular, has a positive effect on general performance and emissions of the TPP, with fuel consumption, CO2 , SO2
and dust emissions, in direct co-firing dropping by approximately 20, 4, 19 and 18 percent, respectively, and in parallel co-firing by 26, 3, 20 and 25 percent, respectively.

The stakeholder management concept has increasingly become more prominent in the project and portfolio literature in recent years. While the need to work effectively with stakeholders have been identified, it remains a continuing challenge for portfolio governance network to identify appropriate stakeholders, to determine when and how to engage with them and to effectively manage and coordinate policies and relationships to achieve expected results and derive portfolio value. This paper considers the definition, identification and classification of portfolio stakeholders. Then the salience of stakeholders and how various combinations of salience are linked to stakeholder engagement activities will be examined. As a classification system three variables: power, urgency, legitimacy are aggregated into the construct of portfolio stakeholder salience.

Large-scale and high throughput approaches increasingly play an essential role in the study of biological systems, which are per se highly complex. Therefore, they need to be examined by these extensive methods to receive information about the large genomic and proteomic networks. In plant biology, this purpose has a strong support through the accessability of the complete genome sequence of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. This brief review intends to focus on the basics and the state-of-the-art of these high-throughput technologies and their application to plant proteomics. It describes protein microarrays, the use of antibodies, 2-DE and MS methods and the yeast two hybrid system, which are emerging as the major technologies for plant proteomics.

The hypothesis of an infinite heat reservoir is not realistic in terrestrial conditions and usual thermal Cycles. However, literature has neglected this fact, admitting that the efficiency of  thermal machines operating with finite reversible source, is the Carnot efficiency. The truth is that, as such efficiency not achieved, as we will demonstrate in this paper

Modern power plants depend heavily on the control system to provide the most reliable means for control, operational efficiency and advanced process optimization. Industrial Control System (ICS) is a term that is used to denote several types of control systems, such as distributed control systems (DCS), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and some smaller control system configurations, i.e. programmable logic controllers (PLC). Each of these systems has various advantages and disadvantages. The main purpose of this paper is to highlight the salient features of present ICS used in thermal power plants.

The performance of a photovoltaic (PV) panel is affected by its orientation and its tilt angle with the horizontal plane. This is because both of these parameters change the amount of solar energy received by the surface of the PV panel. A mathematical model was used to estimate the total solar radiation on the tilted PV surface, and to determine optimum tilt angles for a PV panel installed in Sanliurfa, Turkey. The optimum tilt angles were determined by searching for the values of angles for which the total radiation on the PV surface was maximum for the period studied. The study also investigated the effect of two-axis solar tracking on energy gain compared to a fixed PV panel. This study determined that the monthly optimum tilt angle for a PV panel changes throughout the year with its minimum value as 13° in June and maximum value as 61° in December. The results showed that the gains in the amount of solar radiation throughout the year received by the PV panel mounted at monthly optimum tilt angles with respect to seasonal optimum angles and tilt angel equal to latitude were 1.1% and 3.9%, respectively. Furthermore, daily average of 29.3% gain in total solar radiation results in an daily average of 34.6% gain in generated power with two-axis solar tracking compared to a south facing PV panel fixed at 14° tilt angle on a particular day in July in Sanliurfa, Turkey.

• Effects of wind on the thermo-flow characteristics of cooling towers have been revealed. • Windbreaker types have been studied to decrease the negative effects of wind. • Results show that it is possible to use the momentum effect of wind. • Movable windbreakers should be used to change the direction according to the wind. A B S T R A C T Performance of natural draft dry cooling towers is significantly affected when the wind velocity is higher than a critical level according to their design and geometry. During this type of conditions, global electricity generation of power plants using especially dry type cooling towers is substantially reduced, up to as high as 40%. In order to decrease the reduction in electricity generation of power plants, it is possible to study on the dimensions of the cooling towers. Additionally, using different types of windbreakers can reduce the effects of unfavorable operating conditions. However, the direction of the wind changes with the seasons although the prevailing wind direction is nearly the same. In this study, internal flat and combination of internal flat–external rounded windbreakers have been analyzed by using the computational fluid dynamics approach. The combination of windbreakers, which is able to move axially around the cooling tower, has been propounded to arrange the flow characteristics during the windy days. The studies on the windbreakers in the literature have been aimed to decrease the negative effects of the wind; however, the design in this study provides also an increase in the air mass flowrate due to the momentum effect of the wind.

The fault mode of steam-induced vibration, unbalance of rotating elements, misalignment of turbine shaft, rotor malfunction, oil film instability of bearing etc. are accountable for unreliable and uncertain failure of power plant. Experience of operators, maintenance policy execution of maintenance team and using standards codes of good practices by designers and manufacturers are reducing the potential failure modes of the system. The work investigate
the reliability of steam turbines installed in a thermal power plant. Reliability estimation is based on a last five year
historical failure database of two turbines of 500 MW, both are installed and commissioned at the same time. The
method of reliability evaluation is based on concepts of system reliability, such as functional tree development,
application of failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to categorize critical components based on a historical failure
database to improve the system reliability. It is necessary to improve the reliability indices of the power plane by taking
some measures such as well planned and routine maintenance of equipments as well as training and retraining of technical human resources of the major equipment.

Aircraft emissions and the environmental impact have been studied by many. It is important to consider not only the current pollution status but the pollution growth into the foreseeable future. The common census is that it is a phenomenon which will grow in the future and that new technologies should be studied to minimise the effects. The engines in the aircraft have a major part to play since it is the largest contributor to emissions in an aircraft. All major engine manufacturers have recognised the importance of the issue and have implemented many programmes to research and implement methods of reducing emissions and increase the fuel efficiency.
The A-9 ‘box wing’ aircraft (fig 1), a project of Aerospace Vehicle Design MSc in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Cranfield University, has been designed to serve as a medium range airliner with a focus on the impact of aviation, on the environment (Jemitola & Smith, 2009). The design focuses on reducing emissions thereby trying to reduce the negative impact aviation has on the environment. The A9 aircraft’s primary driver is the aircraft performance and the environmental friendliness hence, open rotor engines were studied as an alternative to the baseline turbofan.
This paper outlines the many results and observations found during the study of the open rotor. The results are mainly of a performance nature but also include results obtained from initial sizing calculations. Certain parameters were assumed due to the availability of data and the engines were designed to provide the required thrust.
The objective of the paper is to study the potential of the open rotor concept in aiding to build better environmentally friendly aircraft in the future.

This paper is concerned with the evaluation of safety measures inside three electrical thermal power plants in Sudan. It also presents valuable information about areas of power plants, at which safety is strengthened, and areas of weakness and where, more corrective safety actions are required to enhance safety. The paper also has focused on the occupational health of employees inside power plants and, how can power plants employees, be trained to be ever safety cautious.

This book shows how Microsoft Excel can be used as an effective educational platform for thermofluid analyses. Excel provides a rich library of built-in functions and powerful tools for data visualisation and analysis. The Solver add-in that comes with it enables the students to perform multi-variable optimisation analyses of thermofluid systems. Building on these capabilities, the Excel-based platform for thermofluid analyses presented in this book also utilises the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming language that comes with Microsoft Office. The book shows how VBA can be used for developing additional user-defined functions (UDFs) for supplementing Excel’s built-in functions and introduces an Excel add-in, called Thermax, that provides UDFs for determining the thermodynamic fluid properties. The fluids covered by Thermax include twelve ideal gases, saturated water and superheated steam mixtures, six refrigerants, humid air for psychrometric analyses, and air at standard atmospheric pressure. Property add-ins developed by other academic and research institutions or individuals can be used to extend the range of thermofluid analyses that can be performed with the Excel-based platform.

India’s 102,000 MW commercial power generating capacity, 69% by thermal power, is the second largest in Asia.
India’s plans to increase this capacity, largely by thermal power, is one of the world’s largest power augmentation
programmes.
Over the next half-century, Indian thermal power plants may pose a bigger risk to biodiversity in the Indian
subcontinent than all other anthropogenic interferences together did in the past. Sulphur dioxide emissions from
thermal power plants will pose the primary risk; and the siting of new power plants closer to river sources, and
therefore forests, will pose a secondary risk.
Sulphur dioxide emissions, which are currently 6.5 million tonnes, are estimated to grow at 5.5% per annum to 19
million tonnes by 2020. Nitrogen dioxide emissions, currently 10 million tonnes, are estimated to grow at an even
faster rate. The synergistic effect of both these acidic gases will put 35 million Ha, or 55% of India’s best forests
in the Western and Eastern Ghats, the Himalayas, the Northeast and the Andaman Islands at risk of forest dieback
as the soils of these forests have a low buffering capacity and are, therefore sensitive to acidic gas depositions.
To minimize coal transport costs, thermal power plants have largely been located at coalmine pitheads in the major
coal belts of India in North-central and East India. However, these areas are also water-stressed. Thermal power
plants require large quantities of water. In their search for water, new thermal power plants will locate closer to
river sources first close to the Eastern Ghats, then the Himalayas and the Western Ghats. These three hill systems
are also forested. As other downstream industry locate close to power plants, the growth centres that are nucleated
close to the forests will put them and the biodiversity they host under pressure.
Short-term, medium-term and long-term measures are required to tackle these new threats to biodiversity. The
short-term measures include: studying the impact of thermal power on biodiversity, setting up a monitoring
mechanism for acidic depositions and their impacts, encouraging the development of green lungs and using bioindicator
plant species to monitor pollution levels around thermal power stations, training bystander populations
residing around power plants to monitor the plants, including the cost of externalities in the price of power,
formulating environment-friendly power plant siting rules and preparing a toxic release inventory which will put in
public domain.
The medium-term measures include: adopting an energy and environment policy, instituting a carbon and sulphur
tax, having the signatory nations to the Malé Declaration sign a binding protocol on sulphur emission caps, setting
emission standards for power plants, encouraging the use of clean fuels, encouraging emissions control
technologies and combined cycle plants, initiating demand-side management by encouraging low energy
consuming devices, instituting Pollution Prevention Boards and decentralizing the grant of consent for operations
to local self governments, minimizing transmission and distribution losses and encouraging the setting up of
renewable energy capacities.

Purpose Pollutant emissions and energy management for vehicles are subjects well debated during nowadays. Current regulations concern all energy conversions from fuel to energy to wheel, taking into account all the possibilities for improving existing solutions to developing new innovative ones. The benefits coming from fuel conversion efficiency are addressing the immediate and specific needs for reducing fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gasses and engine internal losses. The research purpose consists in finding new innovative solutions in order to reduce the energy losses and to increase power density for engines. Design/Methodology/Approach Several research activities confirmed the existence of some efficient engines already tested and produced. Different design solutions were used without including solutions for recovering heat, but obtaining 52% Brake Mean Efficiency and highly increased compression ratio. The fuel cell technology based on hydrogen utilization was considered by many specialists as the future global technology to be used on engines. The proposed researched engine is able to reach high internal pressure, high compression ratio and partially recovering energy losses as thermal losses from the exhaust gasses, the cooling system and the incomplete combustion. Based on the Patent RO130861, the researched engine has several design solutions. Starting from a double-state supercharged engine that reveals high compression ratio and high power density, an opposed pistons engine comes with several improvements: ultra-low noise and vibration level, reduced NOx, limited heat exchange, fuel economy, compact and robust shape. The hybrid engine is dedicated to hybrid powertrains and as the range extender for electric powertrains, being an easy to integrate and less expensive solution. Findings The researched approaches took into account the usage of different working fluids (water, liquid nitrogen, liquid air), but some of them are not able to facilitate the heat recovering. The opposed pistons engine has long expansion similar to the Atkinson cycle and two different places, the engine cylinder and the auxiliary cylinder. The auxiliary cylinder works as a pneumatic two-stroke engine. The hybrid engine used as range extender can be modular and easy to handle as a portable unit, its weight being almost 24 kg, offering the possibility to be used independently. The researched engine can be used as part of the power plants to generate electricity for backup system especially.

ABSTRACT The modern Great Basin of the interior western United States is characterized by surface winds with considerable spatial and temporal variabilities. Wind records from the second half of the 20th century for 12 Great Basin localities, analyzed with standard aeolian-sediment transport methods developed elsewhere in the world, reflect this complexity. The drift potential (DP) for aeolian deposits is generally moderate (DP 200– 400) in the western Great Basin and weak (DP b 200) in the central Great Basin where winds are
predominantly west-southwesterly. DP is relatively high (DP N 300) at the eastern edge of the Great Basin where the dominant prevailing wind direction is south-southwesterly. Both DP and resultant drift direction (RDD) are consistent with synoptic meteorological observations of the evolution of cold fronts in the Great Basin. Meteorological observations show that effective winds to produce dunes are most commonly the result of late winter–early spring cyclogenesis. There has been considerable temporal variability of DP in the latter half of the 20th century. Most of the Great Basin has experienced decreasing wind strength since 1973, consistent with recent studies of wind strength in North America and elsewhere. Dune morphology matches both localized RDD and temporal variations in DP reasonably well in the Great Basin. The results demonstrate that local topography can have an important influence on wind directionality, thus providing a cautionary note on the interpretation of dune morphology in the paleoclimatic and stratigraphic record.

In any modern power plant, the efficiency calculation and loss analysis of a boiler are the first steps to maintain and improve the overall power plant efficiency. The efficiency of the boiler was calculated by the losses or indirect method which is more complicated and more accurate than the direct method. The specific objective of this paper is to calculate the efficiency of a boiler and to identify and analyse the losses involved in the boiler. Boiler's performance deviations were analysed and the causes for these deviations are found. To minimise these deviations the possible remedial measures were found and also aims to suggest methods which would aid in the reduction of the specific fuel consumption and the carbon footprint, apart from calculating the efficiency and analysing the losses involved in a boiler.