Assignment : Sustainable Development in Electrical Power
Systems
MUHAMMAD FAIZ AZRI BIN ROHSELI
EC15123
Abstract
The assignment is about industry visit on
Ukai Thermal & Hydro Power Station.
High technology industrial park in India. It
is important to learn and view the process
and facilities of industrial especially on
generation power plant operation.
I. Introduction
The Ukai Thermal Power Station is located
near Ukai Dam on Tapi River in Tapi
District. It is a Coal Based Power Station.
It is one of the few places in the country
where Hydro and Thermal power
generating station are located. Songarh
Ukai road is situated on east and western
side of Tapi river. Thermal power Station
gets water from the left bank cannel of
ukai dam in which it is again discharged
after the cooling process is completed. The
main component of this power station were
Dam, Spillway, Penstock & Tunnel, Surge
Tank and Power Station.
 Ukai Dam is structures built over
Tapi rivers to stop the water flow
and form a reservoir. The reservoir
stores the water flowing down the
river. This water is diverted to
turbines in power stations. The dam
collects water during the rainy
season and stores it, thus allowing
for a steady flow through the
turbines throughout the year. Dam
is also used for controlling floods
and irrigation. The height of water
in the dam is called head race.
 A spillway used to provide for the
release of flood water from a dam.
It is used to prevent over toping of
the dam which could result in
damage or failure of dams. The
uncontrolled types start releasing
water upon water rising above a
particular level. But in case of the
controlled type, regulation of flow
is possible.
 Penstocks are pipes which carry
water from the reservoir to the
turbines inside power station.
Water under high pressure flows
through the penstock. A tunnel
serves the same purpose as a
penstock. It is used when an
obstruction is present between the
dam and power station such as a
mountain.
 Surge tanks are serves the purpose
of reducing water hammering in
pipes which can cause damage to
pipes. The sudden surges of water
in penstock is taken by the surge
tank, and when the water
requirements increase, it supplies
the collected water thereby
regulating water flow and pressure
inside the penstock.
 Power station contains a Kaplan
turbine coupled to a generator. The
main parts of a Kaplan turbine are
Scroll casing, Guide vanes
mechanism, Hub with vanes and
Draft tube. The water from
penstock enter the scroll casing and
then moves to the guide vanes.
From the guide vanes, the water
 turns through 900 and flow axially
through the runner. The water
brought to the power station rotates
the vanes of the turbine
producing torque and rotation of
turbine shaft. This rotational torque
is transferred to the generator and is
converted into electricity. The used
water is released through the tail
race. The difference between head
race and tail race is called gross
head and by subtracting the
frictional losses we get the net head
available to the turbine for
generation of electricity.
II. Power Plant Operation
1. Boiler:
In the boiler, the water is converted into
steam with the help of heat produced by
the burning of coal. The boiler consists of a
tall chimney like structure lined with tubes,
which may be as tall as 40 m. The boiler
can be either fire tube or water-tube boiler.
The modern big boilers are all water tube
boilers in which water flows through the
tubes and the combustion gases flow
across the tubes. A modern boiler may be
producing steam at the rate of 375
tonnes/hr at 14 MPa and 540°C and
burning coal at the rate of 200 tonnes/hr.
The temperature inside the furnace where
fuel is burnt is of the order of 1500°C. The
inside of boiler also contains separate set
of tubes which constitute heat exchanges in
which heat in the flue gases is exchanged
with other mediums. These are:
(a) Super-heater:
It is meant to raise the steam temperature
above the saturation temperature by
absorbing heat from flue gases. The
maximum temperature to which steam can
be heated will depend upon the metallurgy
and economy in initial cost and
maintenance cost of the super-heater. The
present trend is to keep the steam
temperature at 540°C. The super-heating of
steam makes it possible to recover more
energy from steam which improves the
cycle efficiency of the plant. It also
eliminates the formation of water vapours
during conveying of steam in pipelines and
during its early flow through the turbine
blades. From the super-heater, the steam is
led to high-pressure turbine.
(b) Re-heater:
The function of the re-heater is to raise the
temperature of steam after it has expanded
in the high pressure turbine. After being
reheated, it passes through the intermediate
and low-pressure turbines. In re-heater
also, the temperature of steam is limited to
540°C.
(c) Economiser:
The function of an economiser in a boiler
is to absorb heat from the outgoing flue
gases, to raise the temperature of the feed
water coming from the condenser, before it
enters the evaporative section of the boiler.
It is usually located ahead of air heaters
and following the super-heater and re-
heater in the flue gas stream.
(d) Air-Heater:
The function of the air-heater in a boiler is
to raise the temperature of air with the help
of outgoing flue gases, before the air is led
to the furnace for the combustion of fuel.
The employment of economiser and air-
heater increases the efficiency of the
boiler.
2. Steam Turbine:
The function of a steam turbine is to
convert the heat energy in the steam into
rotational power of the shaft on which the
turbine is supported. In a modem steam
power plant, the steam turbine is usually a
three cylinder tendum compound machine
consisting of one single flow high-pressure
cylinder, one single flow intermediate-
pressure cylinder and one double flow low-
pressure cylinder. The rotational speed of
the shaft is set by the frequency of the
electricity supply and is 3000 rev./min (50
r.p.s.) corresponding to an alternating
electric supply at 50 hertz
3. Generator:
The generator which is directly coupled to
the turbine shaft, converts mechanical
energy of turbine shaft into electric energy.
It consists of two electrical windings. One
is mounted on the turbine shaft, rotating
with it, and is called the rotor. The other is
arranged as a shroud around the rotor,
fixed to the floor, and is called the stator.
The relative motion of rotor and stator
generates the electricity. The generator
which is hydrogen cooled produces
electricity at 11,000 volts.
4. Condenser:
The function of the condenser is to
condense the steam which has been
discharged from low-pressure turbine. The
condenser is a large vessel containing a
large number of brass tubes through which
the cold water is circulated continuously
for condensing the steam flowing outside
the surface of the tubes. The hot
condensate-flows back to the boiler to be
reconverted into steam. The use of
condenser increases the output of the plant
by lowering the exhaust pressure of steam
and provides hot feed water for the boiler.
5. Cooling Towers:
The function of the cooling tower is to cool
the hot cooling water coming out of the
condenser, in closed recirculation cooling
water system. Here, the hot water is cooled
in contact with the atmospheric air. The air
is drawn through the bottom of the cooling
tower by induced draft fans mounted at the
top of the cooling tower. (The flow of air
upward through the cooling tower can also
be produced either by forced draft fan or it
may be natural drought). Whereas, the hot
cooling water falls vertically from the top
of the cooling tower. The cold cooling
water gets collected in the cooling tower
basin and is pumped back through the
condenser. The tower may be made of a
metal or of ferro-concrete and may be as
tall as a 40 storey building. A cooling
tower may cool 18,000 tonnes of water per
hour by 10°C.
6. Circulating Water Pump:
A circulating water pump circulates
cooling water in a closed system
comprising of turbine condenser and
cooling tower. Each pump circulates more
than about 8000 tonnes of water per hour.
7. Boiler Feed Pump:
A boiler feed pump is like a heart to the
steam power plant. Its aim is to supply feed
water (coming from the condenser) to the
boiler at a high pressure. This is one of the
most sophisticated pump and is the largest
auxiliary of the power plant
8. Wagon Tippler:
The coal may be transported to the plant
site by rail wagons. The coal is unloaded at
the plant site mechanically by means of
wagon tipplers. The loaded wagon is
emptied by tippling it in the underground
coal hopper from where the coal is carried
by belt conveyor to the crusher house (in
the case of pulverised fuel firing system).
Each wagon tippler is capable of tippling 6
to 8 wagons of 55 tonnes each an hour.
9. Crusher House:
Coal unloaded by wagon tippler is carried
to crusher house through conveyors for
crushing. Here, the coal is crushed to a size
of 10 mm. The crushed coal is then
supplied to boiler raw coal bunkers. The
surplus coal is carried to coal storage area
by means of belt conveyors. Crushing of
coal is essential for its optimum
pulverising and safe storage.
10. Coal Mill:
The function of coal mill is to pulverise the
raw coal into a fine powder before it is
burnt in the boiler furnace.
11. Induced Draught (I.D. Fans):
The function of the induced draught fan is
to exhaust ash laden flue gases through the
interior of the boiler and dust extracting
equipment and to the chimney. The fans
are axial flow type and are driven by an
electric motor.
12. Ash Precipitators:
To avoid air pollution the outgoing flue
gases should be freed from dust particles
before these escape into the atmosphere
through the chimney. In mechanical
precipitators, the coarser ash particles are
separated by centrifugal action. In
electrostatic precipitator, which removes
finer ash particles, the flue gas is made to
pass through high voltage electric field.
The ash particles get ionised and are
attracted towards the collecting electrodes.
The ash so separated out of flue gases is
collected in hoppers underneath and further
disposed off in ash disposal area.
13. Boiler Chimney:
The flue gases from the boiler, after
removal of the fly ash in the precipitators,
are let off to atmosphere through boiler
chimney. It is a tall ferro-concrete
structure, lined with fire bricks for
protection of ferro-concrete against hot
fuel gases. A protective coating of acid
resistance paint is applied outside on its top
10 meters.
14. Forced Draught Fans (F.D. Fans):
The aim of the forced draught fans is to
draw air from the top of the boiler house
and pass it through the air-preheaters, to
the hot air duct. From here, some of the air
passes directly to the fuel burners and the
remaining is taken through the primary air
fan to the pulverising mill, where it is
mixed with the powdered coal, blowing it
along pipes to the burners of the furnace.
15. Water Treatment Plant:
To avoid any scale formation in boiler
tubes and to prevent priming or foaming
problems, the feed water to be used in
boilers has to be chemically treated in
water treatment plant. The daily make up
water supply which may run into hundreds
of tones is also produced in water
treatment plant.
16. Switch Yard:
Electricity generated a 11 kV by the turbo-
generator is stepped up by unit
transformers to 132/220 kV for further
transmission through high tension lines and
fed to the regional grid.
17. Control Room:
The control room is the operational nerve
centre of a thermal power station. The
performance of all the plant equipments is
constantly monitored here with the help of
sophisticated instrumentation and
controllers. Any adverse deviation in the
parameters of the various systems is
immediately indicated by visual and audio
warning and suitable corrective action is
taken, accordingly. The control room is
air-conditioned to maintain the desired
temperature for proper functioning of the
instruments.The general layout of the
thermal power plant consists of mainly 4
circuits.
The four main circuits are:
(1) Coal and Ash Circuit:
In this circuit, the coal from the storage is
fed to the boiler through coal handling
equipment for the generation of steam. Ash
produced due to combustion of coal is
removed to ash storage through ash-
handling system.
(2) Air and Gas Circuit:
Air is supplied to the combustion chamber
of the boiler either through forced draught
or induced draught fan or by using both.
The dust from the air is removed before
supplying to the combustion chamber. The
exhaust gases carrying sufficient quantity
of heat and ash are passed through the air-
heater where the exhaust heat of the gases
is given to the air and then it is passed
through the dust collectors where most of
the dust is removed before exhausting the
gases to the atmosphere.
(3) Feed Water and Steam Circuit:
The steam generated in the boiler is fed to
the steam prime mover to develop the
power. The steam coming out of the prime
mover is condensed in the condenser and
then fed to the boiler with the help of
pump. The condensate is heated in the
feed-heaters using the steam tapped from
different points of the turbine. The feed
heaters may be of mixed type or indirect
heating type. Some of the steam and water
are lost passing through different
components of the system, therefore, feed
water is supplied from external source to
compensate this loss. The feed water
supplied from external source to
compensate the loss. The feed water
supplied from external source is passed
through the purifying plant to reduce to
reduce dissolve salts to an acceptable level.
This purification is necessary to avoid the
scaling of the boiler tubes.
(4) Cooling Water Circuit:
At the Ukai thermal power plant it is taken
from an artificial lake created near the
plant. The water is pumped in by means of
pumps and the hot water after condensing
the steam is cooled before sending back
into the pond by means of cooling towers.
This is done when there is not adequate
natural water available close to the power
plant. This is a closed system where the
water goes to the pond and is re circulated
back into the power plant.
Operation of the Thermal Power Plant:
Steam is generated in the boiler of the
thermal power plant using heat of the fuel
burnt in the combustion chamber. The
steam generated is passed through steam
turbine where part of its thermal energy is
converted into mechanical energy which is
further used for generating electric power.
The steam coming out of the steam turbine
is condensed in the condenser and the
condensate is supplied back to the boiler
with the help of the feed pump and the
cycle is repeated. The function of the
Boiler is to generate steam. The function of
the condenser is to condense the steam
coming out of the low pressure turbine.
The function of the steam turbine is to
convert heat energy into mechanical
energy. The function of the condenser is to
increase the pressure of the condensate
from the condenser pressure to the boiler
pressure. The other components like
economizer, super heater, air heater and
feed water heaters are used in the primary
circuit to increase the overall efficiency of
the plant.
III. Sustainability Development
The sustainability development of Ukai
Thermal & Hydro Power Station is based
on the environment and security. Ukai
Thermal & Hydro Power Station is a
renewable energy source.Hydroelectricity
uses the energy of running water, without
reducing its quantity, to produce
electricity. Therefore, all hydroelectric
developments, of small or large size,
whether run of the river or of accumulated
storage, fit the concept of renewable
energy. Hydro power plant reservoirs
collect rainwater, which can then be used
for consumption or for irrigation. In storing
water, they protect the water tables against
depletion and reduce our vulnerability to
floods and droughts. Hydro power plant
that are developed and operated in a
manner that is economically viable,
environmentally sensible and socially
responsible represent the best concept of
sustainable development. That means,
"development that today addresses people's
needs without compromising the capacity
of future generations for addressing their
own needs" (World Commission on the
Environment and Development, 1987).
IV. Conclusion
In my opinion, I learn how hydro power
plant operation work. I also know about
the dis-advantages and advantages about
hydro power plant. In this assignment, I
learn important things such as being is
professional engineer is also being
responsible and discipline during doing
studies or work
V. References
 Hydro-Power: The Use of Water as
an Alternative Source of Energy
by Charles Simeons
 http://enipedia.tudelft.nl/wiki/Ukai
_Hydro_Powerplant
 http://www.gsecl.in/index.php/busi
ness/powergeneration
.