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Cooling towers on power stations - why?

Hi All

I was working on a power station in Oman last month and it was gas fired with condensing steam turbines - no evaporation. This week I'm working on a coal fired one in Poland, which has cooling towers and evaporation. Is it something to do with the gas or just that they have no water in Oman?

Thanks

Stephen

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0 Roy Bowdler over 6 years ago

James, Alasdair & Maurice, it seems to me that you have described the heart of the issue. Thermal efficiency, or the amount of potential energy turned into electricity relative to that wasted to the environment, was incredibly important to the CEGB, with small percentages gains, worth huge sums of money saved because of the scale involved. The general justification for what seems perhaps to the initiated a great waste of potential energy, was that we were turning “low grade energy” into “high grade energy” with many more uses.

Perhaps the first stirrings of concern over Fossil Fuel based generation came from “acid rain” in Scandinavia, alleged to be caused by UK power stations rather than the more recent issue of CO2 and global warming. So the response was Flue Gas Desulphurisation retrofits, including at Ratcliffe on Soar.

As an aside, I found myself surprised when post-privatisation, when I saw the industry described by financial analysts as a “stable low tech business”. It seemed anything but “low tech” to me, as at the time when I entered the industry, a new fleet of large power stations was coming on stream using the latest technology?

To reinforce the point about means to dissipate heat, this is a summary about somewhere that I was familiar with. As a child I used to fish near the warm water outlets, but only briefly worked on during its dying days.

Work commenced on the generating station in 1929 and its first stage was operational by 1932. It was completed in 1939, with a final capacity of 200,000 KW. Large plant components and subsequently coal and iron was brought to the power station by rail, and there was a complex of sidings for the storage of power station traffic. The main buildings were steel-framed with a filling of brickwork. Initially it had three, and ultimately six, chimneys each 276 ft high, but cooling towers were not needed at this stage as it had an adequate system of direct cooling from the river.

Some early Power Stations used the canals.
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0 Roy Bowdler over 6 years ago

James, Alasdair & Maurice, it seems to me that you have described the heart of the issue. Thermal efficiency, or the amount of potential energy turned into electricity relative to that wasted to the environment, was incredibly important to the CEGB, with small percentages gains, worth huge sums of money saved because of the scale involved. The general justification for what seems perhaps to the initiated a great waste of potential energy, was that we were turning “low grade energy” into “high grade energy” with many more uses.

Perhaps the first stirrings of concern over Fossil Fuel based generation came from “acid rain” in Scandinavia, alleged to be caused by UK power stations rather than the more recent issue of CO2 and global warming. So the response was Flue Gas Desulphurisation retrofits, including at Ratcliffe on Soar.

As an aside, I found myself surprised when post-privatisation, when I saw the industry described by financial analysts as a “stable low tech business”. It seemed anything but “low tech” to me, as at the time when I entered the industry, a new fleet of large power stations was coming on stream using the latest technology?

To reinforce the point about means to dissipate heat, this is a summary about somewhere that I was familiar with. As a child I used to fish near the warm water outlets, but only briefly worked on during its dying days.

Work commenced on the generating station in 1929 and its first stage was operational by 1932. It was completed in 1939, with a final capacity of 200,000 KW. Large plant components and subsequently coal and iron was brought to the power station by rail, and there was a complex of sidings for the storage of power station traffic. The main buildings were steel-framed with a filling of brickwork. Initially it had three, and ultimately six, chimneys each 276 ft high, but cooling towers were not needed at this stage as it had an adequate system of direct cooling from the river.

Some early Power Stations used the canals.
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Cooling towers on power stations - why?

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