Industrial visit to Vijayawada Thermal Power Station, India
With an aim to go beyond academics Matrusri Engineering College and the IEEE MEC student branch organized an industrial visit to Vijayawada Thermal Power Station (VTPS) also known Dr Narla Tata Rao Thermal Power. It was developed under 4 stages, with the project cost of Rs 193 Crores and Rs 511 Crores respectively. Again with an investment of RS 840 Crores 2 units were commissioned under III Stage. The seventh unit of 500 MW was commissioned in 2009. The station stood first in country during 94-95, 95-96, 96-97, 97-98 and 2001-02 by achieving the highest plant load factor.
45 students of sixth semester Electrical and Electronics Engineering branch who were accompanied by 5 faculty members- Mr. Madhukar, Mr. Kartheek, Mr. Anil, Mrs. Saritha and Mrs. Kalpana. took part in the visit. Students were first allowed to see the central control room, where a clear explanation about the working of plant was given by the employees. Then under the guidance of the employees, students were taken to different sections of the plant to observe diverse operations in a power plant. The students were explained how the coal is powdered before feeding it to the boilers. Different processes like water treatment for generation, combustion process that includes the operation of diesel gun, oil gun and powdered coal, the steam turbine operation etc., were thoroughly explained.
The objective of the visit is to give overview of the Thermal Power plant which is a coal based power plant where coal is transported from coal mines to the power plant by railway in wagons or in a merry-go-round system. We have seen that Coal is unloaded from the wagons using wagon tippler units, to a moving underground conveyor belt. This coal from the mines is of no uniform size. So it is taken to the Crusher house and crushed to a size of 20mm. From the crusher house the coal is either stored in dead storage (generally 40 days coal supply) which serves as coal supply in case of coal supply bottleneck or to the live storage(8 hours coal supply) in the raw coal bunker in the boiler house. Raw coal from the raw coal bunker is supplied to the Coal Mills by a Raw Coal Feeder. The Coal Mills or pulverizer pulverizes the coal to 200 mesh size. The powdered coal from the coal mills is carried to the boiler in coal pipes by high pressure hot air. The pulverized coal air mixture is burnt in the boiler in the combustion zone. Generally in modern boilers tangential
firing system is used i.e. the coal nozzles/ guns form tangent to a circle. The temperature in fire ball is of the order of 1300˚C. The boiler is a water tube boiler hanging from the top. Water is converted to steam in the boiler and steam is separated from water in the boiler Drum. The saturated steam from the boiler drum is taken to the Low Temperature Superheater, Platen Superheater and Final Superheater respectively for superheating. The superheated steam from the final superheater is taken to the High Pressure Steam Turbine (HPT). In the HPT the steam pressure is utilized to rotate the turbine and the resultant is rotational energy. From the HPT the out coming steam is taken to the Reheater in the boiler to increase its temperature as the steam becomes wet at the HPT outlet. After reheating, this steam is taken to the Intermediate Pressure Turbine (IPT) and then to the Low Pressure Turbine (LPT). The outlet of the LPT is sent to the condenser for condensing back to water by a cooling water system. This condensed water is collected in the Hotwell and is again sent to the boiler in a closed cycle. The rotational energy imparted to the turbine by high pressure steam is converted to electrical energy in the Generator.
The state of the art construction and technologies awed the visiting delegation. The students had a great experience in visiting the plant and got an insight of the actual working of the thermal power plant while enforcing their theoretical knowledge on Power Systems, Switch-Gear and Protection, Control Systems and Electrical Machines.
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- Start time: 18 Feb 2018 05:16 AM UTC
- End time: 19 Feb 2018 05:16 AM UTC
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- Ibrahimpatnam Circle,
- Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh 521456
- Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh
- India 521456
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- Co-sponsored by Matrusri Engineering College
- Starts 16 February 2018 05:16 AM UTC
- Ends 18 February 2018 05:16 AM UTC
- No Admission Charge