CHP - thermal power plant, which produces not only electricity, but also provides heat to our homes in winter. Using the example of the Krasnoyarsk Thermal Power Plant, let’s see how almost any thermal power plant works.

There are 3 thermal power plants in Krasnoyarsk, the total electrical power of which is only 1146 MW (for comparison, our Novosibirsk CHPP 5 alone has a capacity of 1200 MW), but what was remarkable for me was Krasnoyarsk CHPP-3 because the station is new - not even a year has passed , as the first and so far only power unit was certified by the System Operator and put into commercial operation. Therefore, I was able to photograph the still dusty, beautiful station and learn a lot about the thermal power plant.

In this post, in addition to technical information about KrasTPP-3, I want to reveal the very principle of operation of almost any combined heat and power plant.

1. Three chimneys, the height of the highest one is 275 m, the second highest is 180 m

The abbreviation CHP itself implies that the station generates not only electricity, but also heat (hot water, heating), and heat generation is perhaps even more of a priority in our well-known harsh winters country.

2. The installed electrical capacity of Krasnoyarsk CHPP-3 is 208 MW, and the installed thermal power 631.5 Gcal/h

In a simplified way, the operating principle of a thermal power plant can be described as follows:

It all starts with fuel. Coal, gas, peat, and oil shale can be used as fuel at different power plants. In our case, this is B2 brown coal from the Borodino open-pit mine, located 162 km from the station. Coal is transported by rail. Part of it is stored, the other part goes along conveyors to the power unit, where the coal itself is first crushed to dust and then fed into the combustion chamber - the steam boiler.

A steam boiler is a unit for producing steam at a pressure above atmospheric pressure from feed water continuously supplied to it. This happens due to the heat released during fuel combustion. The boiler itself looks quite impressive. At KrasCHETS-3, the height of the boiler is 78 meters (26-story building), and it weighs more than 7,000 tons.

6. Steam boiler brand Ep-670, manufactured in Taganrog. Boiler capacity 670 tons of steam per hour

I borrowed it from the site energoworld.ru simplified diagram steam boiler of a power plant, so that you can understand its structure

1 - combustion chamber (furnace); 2 - horizontal gas duct; 3 - convective shaft; 4 - combustion screens; 5 - ceiling screens; 6 — drain pipes; 7 - drum; 8 — radiation-convective superheater; 9 — convective superheater; 10 - water economizer; 11 — air heater; 12 — blower fan; 13 — lower screen collectors; 14 - slag chest of drawers; 15 — cold crown; 16 - burners. The diagram does not show the ash collector and smoke exhauster.

7. Top view

10. The boiler drum is clearly visible. The drum is a cylindrical horizontal vessel having water and steam volumes, which are separated by a surface called the evaporation mirror.

Due to its large steam output, the boiler has developed heating surfaces, both evaporative and superheating. Its firebox is prismatic, quadrangular with natural circulation.

A few words about the principle of operation of the boiler:

Feed water enters the drum, passing through the economizer, and goes down through the drain pipes into the lower collectors of the pipe screens. Through these pipes, the water rises and, accordingly, heats up, since a torch burns inside the firebox. The water turns into a steam-water mixture, part of it goes into the remote cyclones and the other part back into the drum. In both cases, this mixture is divided into water and steam. The steam goes into the superheaters, and the water repeats its path.

11. Cooled flue gases (approximately 130 degrees) exit the furnace into electric precipitators. In electric precipitators, gases are purified from ash, the ash is removed to an ash dump, and the purified flue gases escape into the atmosphere. Effective degree of purification flue gases is 99.7%.
The photo shows the same electrostatic precipitators.

Passing through superheaters, the steam is heated to a temperature of 545 degrees and enters the turbine, where under its pressure the turbine generator rotor rotates and, accordingly, electricity is generated. It should be noted that in condensing power plants (GRES) the water circulation system is completely closed. All steam passing through the turbine is cooled and condensed. Turning back into liquid state, the water is reused. But in the turbines of a thermal power plant, not all the steam enters the condenser. Steam extraction is carried out - production (use of hot steam in any production) and heating (hot water supply network). This makes CHP more economically profitable, but it has its drawbacks. The disadvantage of combined heat and power plants is that they must be built close to the end consumer. Laying heating mains costs a lot of money.

12. Krasnoyarsk CHPP-3 uses a direct-flow technical water supply system, which makes it possible to abandon the use of cooling towers. That is, water for cooling the condenser and used in the boiler is taken directly from the Yenisei, but before that it undergoes purification and desalting. After use, the water is returned through the canal back to the Yenisei, passing through a dissipative release system (mixing heated water with cold water in order to reduce thermal pollution of the river)

14. Turbogenerator

I hope I was able to clearly describe the operating principle of a thermal power plant. Now a little about KrasTPP-3 itself.

Construction of the station began back in 1981, but, as happens in Russia, due to the collapse of the USSR and crises, it was not possible to build a thermal power plant on time. From 1992 to 2012, the station worked as a boiler house - it heated water, but it learned to generate electricity only on March 1 of last year.

Krasnoyarsk CHPP-3 belongs to Yenisei TGC-13. The thermal power plant employs about 560 people. Currently, Krasnoyarsk CHPP-3 provides heat supply industrial enterprises and the housing and communal sector of the Sovetsky district of Krasnoyarsk - in particular, the Severny, Vzlyotka, Pokrovsky and Innokentyevsky microdistricts.

17.

19. CPU

20. There are also 4 hot water boilers at KrasTPP-3

21. Peephole in the firebox

23. And this photo was taken from the roof of the power unit. Big pipe has a height of 180m, the smaller one is the pipe of the starting boiler room.

24. Transformers

25. As a switchgear at KrasTPP-3, a closed switchgear with gas insulation (GRUE) for 220 kV.

26. Inside the building

28. General view switchgear

29. That's all. Thank you for your attention

May 29th, 2013

Original taken from zao_jbi in the post What is a thermal power plant and how does it work.

Once, when we were entering the glorious city of Cheboksary, with east direction my wife noticed two huge towers standing along the highway. "What is this?" - she asked. Since I absolutely did not want to show my wife my ignorance, I dug a little into my memory and came out victoriously: “These are cooling towers, don’t you know?” She was a little confused: “What are they for?” “Well, there’s something there to cool, it seems.” "Why?" Then I got embarrassed because I didn’t know how to get out of it any further.

This question may remain forever in the memory without an answer, but miracles happen. A few months after this incident, I see a post in my friend feed z_alexey about the recruitment of bloggers who want to visit the Cheboksary CHPP-2, the same one that we saw from the road. You have to suddenly change all your plans; missing such a chance would be unforgivable!

So what is CHP?

This is the heart of the power plant and where most of the action takes place. The gas entering the boiler burns, releasing a crazy amount of energy. “Clean water” is also supplied here. After heating, it turns into steam, more precisely into superheated steam, having an outlet temperature of 560 degrees and a pressure of 140 atmospheres. We will also call it “Clean Steam”, because it is formed from prepared water.
In addition to steam, we also have exhaust at the exit. At maximum power, all five boilers consume almost 60 cubic meters natural gas per second! To remove combustion products, you need a non-childish “smoke” pipe. And there is one like this too.

The pipe can be seen from almost any area of ​​the city, given the height of 250 meters. I suspect that this is the tallest building in Cheboksary.

Nearby there is a slightly smaller pipe. Reserve again.

If the thermal power plant operates on coal, additional exhaust cleaning is necessary. But in our case this is not required, since natural gas is used as fuel.

The second section of the boiler-turbine shop contains installations that generate electricity.

There are four of them installed in the turbine hall of the Cheboksary CHPP-2, with a total capacity of 460 MW (megawatt). This is where superheated steam from the boiler room is supplied. It is directed under enormous pressure onto the turbine blades, causing the thirty-ton rotor to rotate at a speed of 3000 rpm.

The installation consists of two parts: the turbine itself, and a generator that generates electricity.

And this is what the turbine rotor looks like.

Sensors and pressure gauges are everywhere.

Both turbines and boilers, in case emergency situation can be stopped instantly. For this there are special valves, capable of shutting off the supply of steam or fuel in a fraction of a second.

I wonder if there is such a thing as an industrial landscape, or an industrial portrait? There is beauty here.

There is a terrible noise in the room, and in order to hear your neighbor you have to strain your ears. Plus it's very hot. I want to take off my helmet and strip down to my T-shirt, but I can’t do that. For safety reasons, short-sleeved clothing is prohibited at the thermal power plant; there are too many hot pipes.
Most of the time the workshop is empty; people appear here once every two hours, during their rounds. And the operation of the equipment is controlled from the Main Control Panel (Group Control Panels for Boilers and Turbines).

This is what it looks like workplace duty officer

There are hundreds of buttons around.

And dozens of sensors.

Some are mechanical, some are electronic.

This is our excursion, and people are working.

In total, after the boiler-turbine shop, at the output we have electricity and steam that has partially cooled and lost some of its pressure. Electricity seems to be easier. The output voltage from different generators can be from 10 to 18 kV (kilovolts). With the help of block transformers, it increases to 110 kV, and then electricity can be transmitted over long distances using power lines (power lines).

It is not profitable to release the remaining “Clean Steam” to the side. Since it is formed from " Clean water", the production of which is a rather complex and costly process, it is more expedient to cool it and return it back to the boiler. So in a vicious circle. But with its help, and with the help of heat exchangers, you can heat water or produce secondary steam, which you can easily sell to third-party consumers.

In general, this is exactly how you and I get heat and electricity into our homes, having the usual comfort and coziness.

Oh yes. But why are cooling towers needed anyway?

It turns out everything is very simple. To cool the remaining “Clean Steam” before re-supplying it to the boiler, the same heat exchangers are used. It is cooled using technical water; at CHPP-2 it is taken directly from the Volga. It does not require any special preparation and can also be reused. After passing through the heat exchanger, the process water is heated and goes to the cooling towers. There it flows down in a thin film or falls down in the form of drops and is cooled by the counter flow of air created by fans. And in ejection cooling towers, water is sprayed using special nozzles. In any case, the main cooling occurs due to the evaporation of a small part of the water. The cooled water leaves the cooling towers through a special channel, after which, with the help of pumping station goes to reuse.
In a word, cooling towers are needed to cool the water, which cools the steam operating in the boiler-turbine system.

All work of the thermal power plant is controlled from the Main Control Panel.

There is always a duty officer here.

All events are logged.

Don't feed me bread, let me take a picture of the buttons and sensors...

That's almost all. Finally, there are a few photos of the station left.

This is an old pipe that is no longer working. Most likely it will be demolished soon.

There is a lot of agitation at the enterprise.

They are proud of their employees here.

And their achievements.

It seems that it was not in vain...

It remains to add that, as in the joke - “I don’t know who these bloggers are, but their guide is the director of the branch in Mari El and Chuvashia of TGC-5 OJSC, IES holding - Dobrov S.V.”

Together with the station director S.D. Stolyarov.

Without exaggeration, they are true professionals in their field.

And of course, many thanks to Irina Romanova, representing the company’s press service, for a perfectly organized tour.

How does a thermal power plant work? CHP units. CHP equipment. Operating principles of thermal power plants. PGU-450.

Hello, dear ladies and gentlemen!

When I studied at the Moscow Energy Institute, I lacked practice. At the institute you deal mainly with “pieces of paper”, but I rather wanted to see “pieces of iron”. It was often difficult to understand how a particular unit worked without ever seeing it before. The sketches offered to students do not always allow them to understand the full picture, and few could imagine the true design, for example, steam turbine, looking only at the pictures in the book.

This page is intended to fill the existing gap and provide everyone who is interested, albeit not too detailed, but at least visual information about how the equipment of the Heat-Electro Central Plant (CHP) works “from the inside”. The article discusses a fairly new type of power unit PGU-450 for Russia, which uses a mixed cycle in its operation - steam-gas (most thermal power plants currently use only the steam cycle).

The advantage of this page is that the photographs presented on it were taken at the time of construction of the power unit, which made it possible to photograph the device of some technological equipment in disassembled form. In my opinion, this page will be most useful for students of energy specialties - for understanding the essence of the issues being studied, as well as for teachers - for using individual photographs as teaching material.

The energy source for the operation of this power unit is natural gas. When gas burns, thermal energy is released, which is then used to operate all equipment in the power unit.

In total, three energy machines operate in the power unit circuit: two gas turbines and one steam turbine. Each of the three machines is designed for a nominal electrical power output of 150 MW.

Gas turbines operate in a manner similar to jet engines.

Gas turbines require two components to operate: gas and air. Air from the street enters through air intakes. The air intakes are covered with grilles to protect the gas turbine installation from birds and any debris. They also have an anti-icing system installed that prevents ice from freezing in winter period time.

Air enters the compressor inlet gas turbine unit(axial type). After this, in compressed form, it enters the combustion chambers, where, in addition to air, natural gas is supplied. In total, each gas turbine unit has two combustion chambers. They are located on the sides. In the first photo below, the air duct has not yet been mounted, and the left combustion chamber is covered with cellophane film; in the second, a platform has already been mounted around the combustion chambers and an electric generator has been installed:

Each combustion chamber has 8 gas burners:

In the combustion chambers, the process of combustion of the gas-air mixture and the release of thermal energy occurs. This is what the combustion chambers look like “from the inside” - right where the flame continuously burns. The walls of the chambers are lined with fireproof lining:

At the bottom of the combustion chamber there is a small viewing window that allows you to observe the processes occurring in the combustion chamber. The video below demonstrates the combustion process of the gas-air mixture in the combustion chamber of a gas turbine unit at the time of its startup and when operating at 30% of the rated power:

The air compressor and gas turbine share the same shaft, and part of the turbine's torque is used to drive the compressor.

The turbine produces more work than is required to drive the compressor, and the excess of this work is used to drive the "payload". An electric generator with an electrical power of 150 MW is used as such a load - it is in it that electricity is generated. In the photo below, the “gray barn” is precisely the electric generator. The electric generator is also located on the same shaft as the compressor and turbine. Everything rotates together at a frequency of 3000 rpm.

When passing a gas turbine, the combustion products give it part of their thermal energy, but not all the energy of the combustion products is used to rotate the gas turbine. A significant part of this energy cannot be used by the gas turbine, so the combustion products at the gas turbine outlet (exhaust gases) still carry a lot of heat (the temperature of the gases at the gas turbine outlet is about 500° WITH). In aircraft engines, this heat is wastefully released into the environment, but in the power unit under consideration it is used further - in the steam power cycle.To do this, exhaust gases from the gas turbine outlet are “blown” from below into the so-called. "recovery boilers" - one for each gas turbine. Two gas turbines - two waste heat boilers.

Each such boiler is a structure several floors high.

In these boilers, the thermal energy from the exhaust gases of a gas turbine is used to heat water and convert it into steam. Subsequently, this steam is used to operate in a steam turbine, but more on that later.

To heat and evaporate, water passes inside tubes with a diameter of approximately 30 mm, located horizontally, and the exhaust gases from the gas turbine “wash” these tubes from the outside. This is how heat is transferred from gases to water (steam):

Having given most of the thermal energy to steam and water, the exhaust gases end up at the top of the waste heat boiler and are removed through a chimney through the roof of the workshop:

On the outside of the building, the chimneys from two waste heat boilers converge into one vertical chimney:

The following photographs allow you to estimate the size of the chimneys. The first photo shows one of the “corners” with which the chimneys of waste heat boilers are connected to the vertical trunk of the chimney; the remaining photos show the process of installing the chimney.

But let's return to the design of waste heat boilers. The tubes through which water passes inside the boilers are divided into many sections - tube bundles, which form several sections:

1. Economizer section (which at this power unit has a special name - Gas Condensate Heater - GPC);

2. Evaporation section;

3. Steam superheating section.

The economizer section serves to heat water from a temperature of about 40°Cto a temperature close to boiling point. After this, the water enters the deaerator - a steel container, where the water parameters are maintained such that the gases dissolved in it begin to be intensively released from it. Gases collect at the top of the tank and are released into the atmosphere. Removing gases, especially oxygen, is necessary to prevent rapid corrosion of process equipment with which our water comes into contact.

After passing through the deaerator, the water acquires the name “feed water” and enters the inlet of the feed pumps. This is what the feed pumps looked like when they were just brought to the station (there are 3 of them in total):

Feed pumps are electrically driven (asynchronous motors are powered by a voltage of 6 kV and have a power of 1.3 MW). Between the pump itself and the electric motor there is a fluid coupling - unit,allowing you to smoothly change the speed of the pump shaft over a wide range.

The principle of operation of the fluid coupling is similar to the principle of operation of the fluid coupling in automatic transmissions of cars.

Inside there are two wheels with blades, one “sits” on the electric motor shaft, the second on the pump shaft. The space between the wheels can be filled with oil to different levels. The first wheel, rotated by the engine, creates a flow of oil that “impacts” the blades of the second wheel, drawing it into rotation. The more oil is poured between the wheels, the better the “grip” the shafts will have between each other, and the greater mechanical power will be transmitted through a fluid coupling to the feed pump.

The oil level between the wheels is changed using the so-called. a “scoop pipe” that pumps out oil from the space between the wheels. The position of the scoop pipe is adjusted using a special actuator.

The feed pump itself is centrifugal, multi-stage. Please note that this pump develops the full steam pressure of the steam turbine and even exceeds it (by the amount of hydraulic resistance of the remaining part of the waste heat boiler, hydraulic resistance of pipelines and fittings).

It was not possible to see the design of the impellers of the new feed pump (since it was already assembled), but parts of an old feed pump of a similar design were found on the territory of the station. The pump consists of alternating rotating centrifugal wheels and fixed guide discs.

Fixed guide disc:

Impellers:

From the outlet of the feed pumps, feed water is supplied to the so-called. "drum separators" - horizontal steel containers designed to separate water and steam:

Each recovery boiler has two separator drums (4 in total per power unit). Together with the tubes of the evaporation sections inside waste heat boilers, they form circulation circuits for the steam-water mixture. It works as follows.

Water with a temperature close to the boiling point enters the tubes of the evaporation sections, flowing through which it is heated to the boiling point and then partially turns into steam. At the exit of the evaporation section we have a steam-water mixture, which enters the separator drums. Special devices are mounted inside the separator drums

Which help to separate steam from water. The steam is then supplied to the steam superheating section, where its temperature increases even more, and the water separated in the separator drum (separated) is mixed with feed water and again enters the evaporation section of the waste heat boiler.

After the steam superheating section, steam from one waste heat boiler is mixed with the same steam from the second waste heat boiler and supplied to the turbine. Its temperature is so high that the pipelines through which it passes, if the thermal insulation is removed from them, glow in the dark with a dark red glow. And now this steam is supplied to a steam turbine in order to give up part of its thermal energy and perform useful work.

A steam turbine has 2 cylinders - cylinder high pressure and cylinder low pressure. The low pressure cylinder is double flow. In it, the steam is divided into 2 streams operating in parallel. The cylinders contain turbine rotors. Each rotor, in turn, consists of stages - disks with blades. “Hitting” the blades, the steam causes the rotors to rotate. The photo below reflects general design steam turbine: closer to us is a high-pressure rotor, further from us is a double-flow low-pressure rotor

This is what the low pressure rotor looked like when it was just unpacked from the factory packaging. Note that it only has 4 steps (not 8):

Here's a closer look at the high pressure rotor. It has 20 steps. Note also the massive steel body turbine, consisting of two halves - lower and upper (only the lower one is shown in the photo), and studs with which these halves are connected to each other. In order for the housing to heat up faster during startup, but at the same time, more evenly, a steam heating system for “flanges and studs” is used - do you see a special channel around the studs? It is through it that a special stream of steam passes to warm up the turbine housing during its startup.

In order for the steam to “hit” the rotor blades and force them to rotate, this steam must first be directed and accelerated in in the right direction. For this purpose the so-called nozzle grilles - fixed sections with fixed blades, placed between the rotating rotor disks. The nozzle grids do NOT rotate - they are NOT mobile, and serve only to direct and accelerate the steam in the desired direction. In the photo below, steam passes “from behind these blades towards us” and “spins” around the axis of the turbine counterclockwise. Next, “hitting” the rotating blades of the rotor disks, which are located immediately behind the nozzle grille, the steam transmits its “rotation” to the turbine rotor.

In the photo below you can see parts of the nozzle grilles prepared for installation

And in these photographs - the lower part of the turbine housing with the halves of the nozzle grilles already installed in it:

After this, the rotor is “put” into the housing, the upper halves of the nozzle grilles are mounted, then the upper part of the housing, then various pipelines, thermal insulation and casing:

After passing through the turbine, the steam enters the condensers. This turbine has two condensers - according to the number of flows in the low-pressure cylinder. Look at the photo below. It clearly shows the lower part of the steam turbine housing. Note the rectangular parts of the low-pressure cylinder housing, covered with wooden panels on top. These are steam turbine exhausts and condenser inlets.

When the steam turbine housing is fully assembled, a space is formed at the outlets of the low-pressure cylinder, the pressure in which during operation of the steam turbine is approximately 20 times lower than atmospheric pressure, therefore the low-pressure cylinder housing is designed not to resist pressure from the inside, but to resist pressure from the outside - i.e. e. atmospheric pressure air. The condensers themselves are located under the low pressure cylinder. In the photo below, these are rectangular containers with two hatches on each.

The condenser is designed similar to a waste heat boiler. Inside it there are many tubes with a diameter of approximately 30mm. If we open one of the two hatches of each condenser and look inside, we will see "tube sheets":

Cooling water, called process water, flows through these tubes. Steam from the exhaust of a steam turbine ends up in the space between the tubes outside them (behind the tube sheet in the photo above), and, giving off residual heat to the process water through the walls of the tubes, condenses on their surface. The steam condensate flows down, accumulates in condensate collectors (at the bottom of the condensers), and then enters the inlet of the condensate pumps. Each condensate pump (there are 5 in total) is driven by a three-phase asynchronous electric motor, designed for a voltage of 6 kV.

From the output of the condensate pumps, water (condensate) again enters the economizer sections of waste heat boilers and, thus, the steam power cycle is closed. The entire system is almost sealed and water, which is the working fluid, is repeatedly converted into steam in waste heat boilers, in the form of steam it does work in the turbine to be converted back into water in the turbine condensers, etc.

This water (in the form of water or steam) is constantly in contact with the internal parts of the process equipment, and in order not to cause rapid corrosion and wear, it is chemically prepared in a special way.

But let's return to the steam turbine condensers.

Process water, heated in the tubes of the steam turbine condensers, is removed from the workshop through underground process water supply pipelines and supplied to the cooling towers - in order to release the heat taken from the steam from the turbine to the surrounding atmosphere. The photographs below show the design of the cooling tower erected for our power unit. The principle of its operation is based on the spraying of warm technical water inside the cooling tower using showering devices (from the word “shower”). Drops of water fall down and give off their heat to the air inside the cooling tower. The heated air rises up, and cold air from the street comes in its place from below the cooling tower.

This is what the cooling tower looks like at its base. It is through the “gap” at the bottom of the cooling tower that cold air comes in to cool the process water

At the bottom of the cooling tower there is a drainage basin where drops of process water released from the showering devices fall and collect and give up their heat to the air. Above the pool there is a system of distribution pipes through which warm process water is supplied to showering devices

The space above and below the showering devices is filled with special padding made from plastic blinds. The lower louvres are designed to more evenly distribute “rain” over the area of ​​the cooling tower, and the upper louvres are designed to catch small droplets of water and prevent excessive carryover of process water along with the air through the top of the cooling tower. However, at the time the photographs presented were taken, the plastic blinds had not yet been installed.

Bo" The largest part of the cooling tower is not filled with anything and is intended only to create draft (heated air rises upward). If we stand above the distribution pipelines, we will see that there is nothing above and the rest of the cooling tower is empty

The following video conveys the impressions of being inside the cooling tower

At the time when the photographs of this page were taken, the cooling tower built for the new power unit was not yet operational. However, on the territory of this thermal power plant there were other cooling towers that were operating, which made it possible to capture a similar cooling tower in operation. Steel louvres at the bottom of the cooling tower are designed to regulate the flow of cold air and prevent overcooling of process water in winter.

The process water, cooled and collected in the cooling tower basin, is again supplied to the inlet of the condenser tubes of the steam turbine in order to take away a new portion of heat from the steam, etc. In addition, process water is used to cool other process equipment, for example, electric generators.

The following video shows how process water is cooled in a cooling tower.

Since process water is in direct contact with the surrounding air, dust, sand, grass and other dirt get into it. Therefore, at the entrance of this water to the workshop, on the inlet pipeline of technical water, a self-cleaning filter is installed. This filter consists of several sections mounted on a rotating wheel. From time to time, a reverse flow of water is organized through one of the sections to wash it. Then the wheel with sections turns, and washing of the next section begins, etc.

This is what this self-cleaning filter looks like from inside the service water pipeline:

And this is from the outside (the drive motor has not yet been mounted):

Here we should make a digression and say that the installation of all technological equipment in the turbine shop is carried out using two overhead cranes. Each crane has three separate winches designed to handle loads of different weights.

Now I would like to talk a little about the electrical part of this power unit.

Electricity is generated using three electric generators driven by two gas and one steam turbines. Some of the equipment for installation of the power unit was brought by road, and some by rail. A railway was laid directly into the turbine shop, along which large-sized equipment was transported during the construction of the power unit.

The photo below shows the process of delivering the stator of one of the electric generators. Let me remind you that each electric generator has a rated electrical power of 150 MW. Note that the railway platform on which the generator stator was transported has 16 axles (32 wheels).

The railway has a slight rounding at the entrance to the workshop, and given that the wheels of each wheel pair are rigidly fixed to their axles, when moving on a rounded section railway one of the wheels of each wheel pair is forced to slip (since the rails have different lengths). The video below shows how this happened when the platform with the stator of an electric generator was moving. Pay attention to how the sand bounces on the sleepers as the wheels slip along the rails.

Due to their large mass, the installation of stators of electric generators was carried out using both overhead cranes:

The photo below shows internal view stator of one of the electric generators:

And this is how the installation of electric generator rotors was carried out:

The output voltage of the generators is about 20 kV. Output current - thousands of amperes. This electricity is removed from the turbine shop and supplied to step-up transformers located outside the building. To transfer electricity from electric generators to step-up transformers, the following electrical wires are used (current flows through a central aluminum pipe):

To measure the current in these “wires” the following current transformers are used (in the third photo above the same current transformer is standing vertically):

The photo below shows one of the step-up transformers. Output voltage - 220 kV. From their outputs, electricity is supplied to the power grid.

In addition to electrical energy, the thermal power plant also produces thermal energy, used for heating and hot water supply to nearby areas. To do this, steam extraction is carried out in the steam turbine, i.e., part of the steam is removed from the turbine before reaching the condenser. This still quite hot steam enters the network heaters. A network heater is a heat exchanger. It is very similar in design to a steam turbine condenser. The difference is that it is not process water that flows in the tubes, but network water. There are two network heaters at the power unit. Let's look again at the photo with the capacitors of the old turbine. Rectangular containers are capacitors, and “round” ones are precisely network heaters. Let me remind you that all this is located under the steam turbine.

The network water heated in the tubes of network heaters is supplied through underground pipelines of network water into the heating network. Having heated the buildings in the areas located around the thermal power plant and given up its heat to them, the network water returns to the station to be heated again in network heaters, etc.

The operation of the entire power unit is controlled by the automated process control system "Ovation" of the American corporation "Emerson"

And here’s what the cable mezzanine, located under the automated process control system room, looks like. Through these cables, the automated process control system receives signals from many sensors, and also sends signals to actuators.

Thank you for visiting this page!

Once, when we were entering the glorious city of Cheboksary, from the eastern direction my wife noticed two huge towers standing along the highway. "What is this?" - she asked. Since I absolutely did not want to show my wife my ignorance, I dug a little into my memory and came out victoriously: “These are cooling towers, don’t you know?” She was a little confused: “What are they for?” “Well, there’s something there to cool, it seems.” "Why?" Then I got embarrassed because I didn’t know how to get out of it any further.
This question may remain forever in the memory without an answer, but miracles happen. A few months after this incident, I see a post in my friend feed about a recruitment of bloggers who want to visit the Cheboksary CHPP-2, the same one that we saw from the road. You have to suddenly change all your plans; missing such a chance would be unforgivable! So what is CHP? According to Wikipedia, CHP - short for combined heat and power plant - is a type of thermal station that not only produces electricity, but is also a source of heat, in the form of steam or hot water. I’ll tell you how everything works below, but here you can see a couple of simplified diagrams of the station’s operation.

So it all starts with water. Since water (and steam, as its derivative) at a thermal power plant is the main coolant, before it enters the boiler, it must first be prepared. In order to prevent scale from forming in boilers, at the first stage, the water must be softened, and at the second, it must be cleaned of all kinds of impurities and inclusions. All this happens on the territory of the chemical workshop, in which all these containers and vessels are located.


Water is pumped by huge pumps.
The work of the workshop is controlled from here.
There are a lot of buttons around...
Sensors...
And also completely incomprehensible elements... The quality of the water is checked in the laboratory. Everything is serious here...

The water obtained here will be called “Clean Water” in the future. So, we've sorted out the water, now we need fuel. Usually it is gas, fuel oil or coal. At the Cheboksary CHPP-2, the main type of fuel is gas supplied through main gas pipeline Urengoy - Pomary - Uzhgorod. Many stations have a fuel preparation point. Here, natural gas, like water, is purified from mechanical impurities, hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide. The thermal power plant is a strategic facility, operating 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Therefore, here everywhere, and for everything, there is a reserve. Fuel is no exception. In the absence of natural gas, our station can operate on fuel oil, which is stored in huge tanks located across the road.
Now we have Clean water and prepared fuel. The next point of our journey is the boiler and turbine shop. It consists of two sections. The first contains boilers. No, not like that. The first contains BOILERS. To write differently, a hand doesn’t rise, each one is the size of a twelve-story building. There are five of them at CHPP-2 in total.
This is the heart of the power plant and where most of the action takes place. The gas entering the boiler burns, releasing a crazy amount of energy. “Clean water” is also supplied here. After heating, it turns into steam, more precisely into superheated steam, having an outlet temperature of 560 degrees and a pressure of 140 atmospheres. We will also call it “Clean Steam”, because it is formed from prepared water. In addition to steam, we also have exhaust at the exit. At maximum power, all five boilers consume almost 60 cubic meters of natural gas per second! To remove combustion products, you need a non-childish “smoke” pipe. And there is one like this too.

The pipe can be seen from almost any area of ​​the city, given the height of 250 meters. I suspect that this is the tallest building in Cheboksary. Nearby there is a slightly smaller pipe. Reserve again. If the thermal power plant operates on coal, additional exhaust cleaning is necessary. But in our case this is not required, since natural gas is used as fuel. The second section of the boiler-turbine shop contains installations that generate electricity.
There are four of them installed in the turbine hall of the Cheboksary CHPP-2, with a total capacity of 460 MW (megawatt). This is where superheated steam from the boiler room is supplied. It is directed under enormous pressure onto the turbine blades, causing the thirty-ton rotor to rotate at a speed of 3000 rpm.
The installation consists of two parts: the turbine itself, and a generator that generates electricity.

And this is what the turbine rotor looks like.
Sensors and pressure gauges are everywhere.

Both turbines and boilers can be stopped instantly in case of an emergency. For this, there are special valves that can shut off the supply of steam or fuel in a fraction of a second.
I wonder if there is such a thing as an industrial landscape, or an industrial portrait? There is beauty here.
There is a terrible noise in the room, and in order to hear your neighbor you have to strain your ears. Plus it's very hot. I want to take off my helmet and strip down to my T-shirt, but I can’t do that. For safety reasons, short-sleeved clothing is prohibited at the thermal power plant; there are too many hot pipes. Most of the time the workshop is empty; people appear here once every two hours, during their rounds. And the operation of the equipment is controlled from the Main Control Panel (Group Control Panels for Boilers and Turbines). This is what the duty officer's workplace looks like.
There are hundreds of buttons around.

And dozens of sensors.
Some are mechanical, some are electronic. This is our excursion, and people are working.
In total, after the boiler-turbine shop, at the output we have electricity and steam that has partially cooled and lost some of its pressure. Electricity seems to be easier. The output voltage from different generators can be from 10 to 18 kV (kilovolts). With the help of block transformers, it increases to 110 kV, and then electricity can be transmitted over long distances using power lines (power lines).
It is not profitable to release the remaining “Clean Steam” to the side. Since it is formed from “Clean Water”, the production of which is a rather complex and costly process, it is more expedient to cool it and return it back to the boiler. And so on in a vicious circle. But with its help and with the help of heat exchangers, you can heat water or produce secondary steam, which you can safely sell to third-party consumers.
In general, this is how you and I get heat and electricity into our homes, having the usual comfort and coziness. Oh yes. But why are cooling towers needed anyway?
It turns out that everything is very simple. To cool the remaining “Clean Steam” before feeding it into the boiler again, the same heat exchangers are used. It is cooled using technical water; at CHPP-2 it is taken directly from the Volga. It does not require any special preparation and can also be reused. After passing through the heat exchanger, the water turns into steam, which cools in the cooling towers, condenses, and turns back into water. Water leaves the cooling towers through a special channel, after which, with the help of a pumping station, it is sent for reuse. In short, cooling towers are needed to cool steam, which cools other steam. Sorry for the tautology...
All operation of the thermal power plant is controlled from the main control panel.
There is always a duty officer here.
All events are logged.
Don't feed me bread, let me take a picture of the buttons and sensors...


That's almost all. Finally, there are a few photos of the station left. This is an old pipe that is no longer working. Most likely it will be demolished soon. There is a lot of agitation at the enterprise.

They are proud of their employees here.
And their achievements.
It seems that it was not in vain...
Without exaggeration, they are true professionals in their field.

Supplying the population with heat and electricity is one of the main tasks of the state. In addition, without electricity generation it is impossible to imagine a developed manufacturing and processing industry, without which the country’s economy cannot exist in principle.

One of the ways to solve the problem of energy shortage is the construction of thermal power plants. The interpretation of this term is quite simple: this is the so-called combined heat and power plant, which is one of the most common types of thermal power plants. In our country, they are very common, since they run on organic fossil fuel (coal), the characteristics of which have very modest requirements.

Peculiarities

That's what a thermal power plant is. The definition of the concept is already familiar to you. But what features does this type of power plant have? It’s no coincidence that they are placed in a separate category!?

The fact is that they generate not only electricity, but also heat, which is supplied to consumers in the form of hot water and steam. It should be noted that electricity is a by-product, since the steam that is supplied to heating systems first rotates the generator turbines. Combining two enterprises (boiler house and power plant) is good because it can significantly reduce fuel consumption.

However, this also leads to a rather insignificant “distribution area” of thermal power plants. The decoding is simple: since the station supplies not only electricity, which minimal losses can be transported thousands of kilometers, but also heated coolant, they cannot be located at a significant distance from a populated area. It is not surprising that almost all thermal power plants are built in close proximity to cities, whose residents they heat and light.

Ecological significance

Due to the fact that during the construction of such a power plant it is possible to get rid of many old city boiler houses, which play an extremely negative role in the ecological condition of the area ( huge amount soot), the air purity in the city can sometimes be increased by an order of magnitude. In addition, new thermal power plants make it possible to eliminate waste from city landfills.

The latest cleaning equipment makes it possible to effectively purify emissions, and the energy efficiency of such a solution is extremely high. Thus, the energy release from burning a ton of oil is identical to the volume that is released when recycling two tons of plastic. And this “good” will be enough for decades to come!

Most often, the construction of thermal power plants involves the use of fossil fuels, as we have already discussed above. However, in recent years It is planned to create which will be installed in hard-to-reach regions of the Far North. Since the delivery of fuel there is extremely difficult, nuclear energy is the only reliable and constant source energy.

What are they?

There are thermal power plants (photos of which are in the article) industrial and “household”, heating. As you can easily guess from the name, industrial power plants provide electricity and heat to large manufacturing enterprises.

They are often built during the construction of the plant, forming a single infrastructure together with it. Accordingly, “domestic” varieties are being built near residential areas of the city. In industrial applications it is transmitted in the form of hot steam (no more than 4-5 km), in the case of heating - using hot water (20-30 km).

Information about station equipment

The main equipment of these enterprises are turbine units that transform mechanical energy into electricity, and boilers responsible for generating steam, which rotates the flywheels of generators. The turbine unit includes both the turbine itself and synchronous generator. Pipes with a back pressure of 0.7-1.5 Mn/m2 are installed at those thermal power plants that supply heat and energy industrial facilities. Models with a pressure of 0.05-0.25 Mn/m2 are used to supply household consumers.

Efficiency issues

In principle, all generated heat can be fully utilized. But the amount of electricity generated at a thermal power plant (you already know the definition of this term) directly depends on the heat load. Simply put, in the spring-summer period its production decreases almost to zero. Thus, backpressure installations are used only to supply industrial facilities whose consumption is more or less uniform throughout the entire period.

Condensing type units

In this case, only the so-called “bleeding steam” is used to supply consumers with heat, and all the rest of the heat is often simply lost, dissipating in environment. To reduce energy losses, such CHP plants must operate with minimal heat release to the condensing unit.

However, since the times of the USSR, such stations have been built in which a hybrid mode is structurally provided: they can operate like conventional condensing thermal power plants, but their turbine generator is fully capable of operating in backpressure mode.

Universal varieties

It is not surprising that it is steam condensation installations that have become most widespread due to their versatility. Thus, only they make it possible to practically independently regulate the electrical and thermal load. Even if no heat load is expected at all (in the case of a particularly hot summer), the population will be supplied with electricity according to the previous schedule (Zapadnaya CHPP in St. Petersburg).

“Thermal” types of CHP

As you can already understand, heat production at such power plants is extremely uneven throughout the year. Ideally, about 50% of hot water or steam is used to heat consumers, and the rest of the coolant is used to generate electricity. This is exactly how the South-West CHPP works in the Northern capital.

Heat release in most cases is carried out according to two schemes. If used open option, then hot steam from the turbines goes directly to consumers. If a closed operating scheme was chosen, the coolant is supplied after passing through the heat exchangers. The choice of scheme is determined based on many factors. First of all, the distance from the object provided with heat and electricity, the number of population and the season are taken into account. Thus, the South-West CHPP in St. Petersburg operates according to closed scheme, as it provides greater efficiency.

Characteristics of the fuel used

Solid, liquid and can be used. Since thermal power plants are often built in close proximity to large settlements and cities, it is often necessary to use quite valuable types of it, gas and fuel oil. The use of coal and garbage as such in our country is quite limited, since not all stations have modern, effective air purification equipment installed.

To clean the exhaust from installations, special particle traps are used. To disperse solid particles in sufficiently high layers of the atmosphere, pipes 200-250 meters high are built. As a rule, all combined heat and power plants (CHP) cost quite long distance from water supply sources (rivers and reservoirs). Therefore, artificial systems are used that include cooling towers. Direct-flow water supply is extremely rare, under very specific conditions.

Features of gas stations

Gas-fired thermal power plants stand apart. Heat supply to consumers is carried out not only from the energy that is generated during combustion, but also from the recovery of heat from the gases that are generated. The efficiency of such installations is extremely high. In some cases, nuclear power plants can also be used as thermal power plants. This is especially common in some Arab countries.

There, these stations play two roles at once: they provide the population with electricity and technical water, since they simultaneously perform functions. Now let’s look at the main thermal power plants in our country and neighboring countries.

Yugo-Zapadnaya, St. Petersburg

In our country, the Western Thermal Power Plant, which is located in St. Petersburg, is famous. Registered as OJSC "Yugo-Zapadnaya CHPP". The construction of this modern facility served several functions:

• Compensation for the severe shortage of thermal energy, which prevented the intensification of the housing construction program.
• Increasing the reliability and energy efficiency of the city system as a whole, since it was precisely this aspect that St. Petersburg had problems with. The thermal power plant allowed us to partially solve this problem.

But this station is also known for being one of the first in Russia to meet the strictest environmental requirements. The city government has allocated an area of ​​more than 20 hectares for the new enterprise. The fact is that the reserve area remaining from the Kirovsky district was allocated for construction. In those parts there was an old collection of ash from CHPP-14, and therefore the area was not suitable for housing construction, but it was extremely well located.

The launch took place at the end of 2010, and almost the entire city leadership was present at the ceremony. Two newest automatic boiler installations were put into operation.

Murmansk

The city of Murmansk is known as the base of our fleet on the Baltic Sea. But it is also characterized by extreme severity climatic conditions, which imposes certain requirements on his energy system. It is not surprising that the Murmansk Thermal Power Plant is in many ways a completely unique technical facility, even on a national scale.

It was put into operation back in 1934, and since then it has continued to regularly supply city residents with heat and electricity. However, in the first five years, the Murmansk CHPP was an ordinary power plant. The first 1,150 meters of the heating main were laid only in 1939. The point is the neglected Nizhne-Tulomskaya hydroelectric power station, which almost completely covered the city’s electricity needs, and therefore it became possible to free up part of the thermal output for heating city houses.

The station is characterized by the fact that it operates in a balanced mode all year round, since its thermal and “energy” output is approximately equal. However, in the conditions of the polar night, the thermal power plant at some peak moments begins to use most of the fuel specifically to generate electricity.

Novopolotsk station, Belarus

The design and construction of this facility began in August 1957. The new Novopolotsk CHPP was supposed to solve the issue of not only heating the city, but also providing electricity to the oil refinery being built in the same area. In March 1958, the project was finally signed, approved and approved.

The first stage was put into operation in 1966. The second was launched in 1977. At the same time, the Novopolotsk CHPP was modernized for the first time, its peak power was increased to 505 MW, and a little later the third stage of construction was launched, completed in 1982. In 1994, the station was converted to liquefied natural gas.

To date, about 50 million US dollars have already been invested in the modernization of the enterprise. Thanks to such an impressive cash injection, the enterprise was not only completely switched to gas, but also received a huge amount of completely new equipment that will allow the station to serve for decades.

Conclusions

Oddly enough, today it is the outdated thermal power plants that are truly universal and promising stations. Using modern neutralizers and filters, you can heat water by burning almost all the garbage that produces locality. This achieves a triple benefit:

• Landfills are unloaded and cleared.
• The city receives cheap electricity.
• The heating problem is being solved.

In addition, in coastal areas it is quite possible to build thermal power plants, which will simultaneously serve as desalinators of sea water. This liquid is quite suitable for irrigation, for livestock farms and industrial enterprises. In a word, real technology future!