Chapter Two

Analysis of Steam Cycles

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 1.Introduction

 energy is released by the burning of fuel is transferred to the water in the

boiler to generate steam at high temperature and pressure , which then
expands in the turbine to a low pressure to produce shaft work.
 The main process in steam power station is the conversion of heat energy
into electrical energy, it comprises of many steps for its proper working and
good efficiency.
 The whole arrangement of a steam power station could be divided into
following steps.
 The whole arrangement is shown in a schematic figure given below.

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main components
 Coal and ash handling arrangement
 Steam generating plant
 Steam turbine
 Alternator – Generator
 Feed water
 Cooling arrangement

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1.1 Coal and ash handling
 The coal is transported from different places to the station

by means of rails or road and is stored in a coal storage

plant. It is to use as a preserve at the time of scarcity. From
coal storage plant it is transferred to coal handling plant
for pulverization.

What is pulverization?
 Pulverization is the process by which large lumps of coal
are broke to small pieces.

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 Why Pulverization is done?

 Pulverization is done to increase the surface area of coal and

thereby helping the easy combustion of coal with small
intake of air.
 The pulverized coal is fed to the boiler by means of conveyor
belt.
 The coal is burnt in the boiler and the ash so produced by
burning is removed to the ash handling system and finally to
the ash storage area for its disposal.
 This process is necessary since ash in the boiler furnace does

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notpower
promote proper combustion.
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 Pulverizer - is a mechanical device for the grinding of many

different types of materials.

Types of Pulverizers

I - Ball and Tube Mill - Ball mill is a Pulverizers that consists of a

horizontal rotating cylinder, up to three diameters in length, containing

a charge of tumbling or cascading steel balls, pebbles, or rods. Tube

mill is a revolving cylinder of up to five diameters in length used for

fine pulverization of ore, rock, and other such materials; the material,

mixed with water, is fed into the chamber from one end, and passes

out the other end as slime.

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II - Ring and Ball

This type consists of two rings separated by a series of large balls.

The lower ring rotates, while the upper ring presses down on the
balls via a set of spring and adjuster assemblies. Coal is introduced
into the center or side of the Pulverizers (depending on the design)
and is ground as the lower ring rotates causing the balls to orbit
between the upper and lower rings. The coal is carried out of the mill
by the flow of air moving through it. The size of the coal particles
released from the grinding section of the mill is determined by a
classifier separator.
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1.2 Ash handling System
 Ash is the inert matter in coal and the residue after

combustion. This has to be collected and disposed off

without letting it out into the atmosphere. A part of the
ash, around 15 % collects as ‘Bottom ash’ at the bottom
of the furnace. The other part collects as ‘Fly ash’ in the
Electrostatic Precipitators. The collected ash is then
transported to disposal yards or storage silos.

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1.3 Electrostatic precipitator

 It is a device which removes dust or other finely divided particles from flue
gases by charging the particles inductively with an electric field, then
attracting them to highly charged collector plates. Also known as precipitator.
 The process depends on two steps. In the first step the suspension passes
through an electric discharge (corona discharge) area where ionization of the
gas occurs. The ions produced collide with the suspended particles and
confer on them an electric charge. The charged particles drift toward an
electrode of opposite sign and are deposited on the electrode where their
electric charge is neutralized.
 The phenomenon would be more correctly designated as electro deposition
from the gas phase.

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 The use of electrostatic precipitators has become common in
numerous industrial applications.
 Among the advantages of the electrostatic precipitator are its ability
to handle large volumes of gas, at elevated temperatures if
necessary, with a reasonably small pressure drop, and the removal of
particles in the micrometer range.
 Some of the usual applications are:
 removal of dirt from flue gases in steam plants.
 cleaning of air to remove fungi and bacteria in establishments
producing antibiotics and other drugs, and in operating rooms.
 cleaning of air in ventilation and air conditioning systems.
 removal of oil mists in machine shops and acid mists in chemical
process plants.
 cleaning of blast furnace gases.
 recovery of valuable materials such as oxides of copper, lead, and
tin

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1.4 Steam Generating Plant
 The steam generating plant consist of boiler and its auxiliary equipment's for
the utilization of flue gases.
Boiler
 The heat produced by the burning of coal in the boiler is used to produce steam
at high temperature and pressure. The flue gases produced at the time of
combustion is passed through the super heater, economizer, air pre-heater and
finally exhausted into the atmosphere through chimney.
Super Heater
 The steam produced in the boiler has got moisture content so it is dried and
superheated (i.e. steam temperature is increased above boiling point of
water)by the flue gases on the way to chimney. Super heating ensures two
benefits at first the overall efficiency of the system is increased and secondly
the corrosion to the turbine blades due to condensation in later stages is
prevented. The superheated steam from super-heater is fed to steam turbine by
means of a main valve.

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1.6 Economizer

 Economizer is a feed water heater. It uses the heat produced by the

flue gases for this purpose. The feed water is passed through the
economizer before supplying it to the boiler and economizer
absorbs a part of heat from the flue gas to increase the temperature
of the feed water.

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there are three types of steam
 Wet steam: A mixture of water plus steam (liquid plus vapor) at the
boiling point temperature of water at a given pressure. Quality of steam
refers to the fraction or percentage of gaseous steam in a wet steam
mixture.
 Dry steam: Steam, at the given pressure, that contains no water (also
referred to as saturated steam). The steam quality = 100%. At the top of
steam generator units for producing saturated steam, there are moisture
separators used to remove residual water droplets from outgoing steam.
 Superheated steam: Dry steam, at the given pressure, that has been
heated to a temperature higher than the boiling point of water at that
pressure.

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1.8 Super heater
 A greater quantity of steam can be generated from a given quantity
of water by superheating it.
 As the fire is burning at a much higher temperature than the
saturated steam it produces, far more heat can be transferred to the
once-formed steam by superheating it and turning the water
droplets suspended there in into more steam and greatly reducing
water consumption.
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1.9 Economizer
 Flue gases coming out of the boiler carry lot of heat.

 The function of economizer is to recover some of the heat from the

heat carried away in the flue gases up the flue gas stack and utilize
it for heating the feed water to the boiler.
 It is placed in the passage of flue gases in-between the exit from the
boiler and the entry to the chimney.
 The use of economizer results in saving in coal consumption ,
increase in steaming rate and high boiler efficiency but needs extra
investment and increase in maintenance costs and floor area
required for the plant.

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1.10 Air preheater
 Air pre-heater increases the temperature of the air supplied to coal for
combustion using flue gases. Air is drawn in using a forced draught fan
and is passed through pre-heater before supplying it to the boiler. This
process increases the thermal efficiency and steam capacity per square
meter of the boiler surface.
 The remaining heat of flue gases is utilized by air preheater. It is a
device used in steam boilers to transfer heat from the flue gases to
the combustion air before the air enters the furnace. Also known as
air heater , air-heating system. It is kept at a place near by where the
air enters in to the boiler.
 The purpose of the air preheater is to recover the heat from the flue
gas from the boiler to improve boiler efficiency by burning warm
air which increases combustion efficiency, and reducing useful
heat lost from the flue.

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1.11 Deaerator -is a device that is widely used for the
removal of air and other dissolved gases from the feed
water to steam-generating boilers.
There are two basic types of deaerators ,
1. the tray-type
2. the spray-type

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 1.12 Feed water heater- is a power plant component used to
pre-heat water delivered to a steam generating boiler.
Preheating the feed water reduces the irreversibilities
involved in steam generation and therefore improves the
thermodynamic efficiency of the system.
1.13 Flue gas stack (chimney) - A chimney is a structure for
venting hot flue gases or smoke from a boiler, stove, furnace
or fireplace to the outside atmosphere. Chimneys are
typically vertical, or as near as possible to vertical, to ensure
that the gases flow smoothly, drawing air into the combustion
in what is known as the stack, or chimney, effect.
The space inside a chimney is called a flue.

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1.14 Steam Turbine
 The dry and super heated steam from super heater is fed to
the turbine by means of a main valve.
 Due to the striking or reaction impact of the steam on the
blades of turbine it starts rotating i.e. heat energy is
converted to mechanical energy.
 After giving heat energy to the turbine the steam is
exhausted to a condenser which condenses the exhausted
steam by means of a cold water circulation.

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 1.15 Alternator (Generator type)
The steam turbine is coupled to an alternator generator converts
the mechanical energy into electrical energy.
The electrical output is transferred to the bus bars through
transformer, circuit breaker and isolators.
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 1.16 Feed Water
 The condensed water produced in the condenser is used

as feed water.

 some amount of water may be lost in the cycle but it is

compensated using an external source and the cycle

repeats and gives a better efficiency to the system.

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1.17 Cooling Arrangement
 In order to increase the efficiency of the plant the steam
coming from the turbine is condensed using a condenser.
 The water circulation for cooling steam in condenser is
take from a natural source like river, stream etc. and the
out coming hot water from condenser is discharged in
some lower portion of the water source.
 In scarcity of water the water from the condenser is
cooled and reused with the help of a cooling tower

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 2. RANKINE POWER GENERATION CYCLE

a heat engine: produces work from heat by wasting a fraction of heat

input to a low temperature reservoir.

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 Process analysis using the First Law:

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  Heat transfer in the ideal Rankine Cycle relies on phase change, a
very efficient way to store and release energy.
 The working fluid is usually water/steam. During the cycle, the
properties of the working fluid change as below with associated
heat/work exchanges.

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Analysis

ENTROPY GENERATION IN RANKINE CYCLES

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 3.Re-heat

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 4.Regeneration
 The regenerative Rankine cycle is so named because after emerging from
the condenser (possibly as a sub cooled liquid) the working fluid is
heated by steam tapped from the hot portion of the cycle. On the diagram
shown, the fluid at 2 is mixed with the fluid at 4 (both at the same
pressure) to end up with the saturated liquid at 7. The Regenerative
Rankine cycle (with minor variants) is commonly used in real power
stations.
 Another variation is where 'bleed steam' from between turbine stages is
sent to feed water heaters to preheat the water on its way from the
condenser to the boiler.

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 5. Performance Evaluation

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 6. Feed-Water Heaters

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 7. Reheat-Regenerative Cycle
 In steam power plants using high steam pressure reheat
regenerative cycle is used.
 The thermal efficiency of this cycle is higher than only reheat or
regenerative cycle. The following fig shows the flow diagram of
reheat regenerative cycle. This cycle is commonly used to produce
high pressure steam to increase the cycle efficiency.

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 8. Binary Vapor Cycle
 A Binary Vapor Rankine Power Cycle consists of two
separate Rankine Vapor Power Cycles that use different
working fluids.
 The two cycles only interact through a shared heat
exchanger (HEX).
 In this heat exchanger, the subcooled liquid leaving the
pump in the low-temperature cycle absorbs heat from the
turbine effluent of the high-temperature cycle.
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