Essentials of a Steam Power Plant
- Coal based steam power plants are commonly used in India to produce electrical power in central stations since the coal is cheaply available in abundance.
- These plants are built in the capacity range of 10 MW or even larger capacities.
- These plants are located at a site where the fuel transportation facilities either by rail or ship and the water required for formation of steam and as cooling water in the condenser are easily available.
- These plants are used basically as base load plants.
- Steam power plants using steam basically works on Rankine cycle in which the steam generated in the boiler at high pressure and temperature expands in a prime mover (Steam turbine) exhaust of steam from turbine is condensed in the condenser, finally, the condensate from condenser is pumped back to boiler.
- However, in actual power plant, there are lot many modifications and improvements on the Rankine cycle for better fuel economy and improvement in thermal efficiency.