#Power #plant or power station, or powerhouse and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power .
Power plants that work on fossil fuel types are:
#Steam, #Gas and Combined power plant
Steam power plant works by burning fossil fuel (oil, diesel, gas, coal) inside a #boiler that contains water pipes to make the water boils and converting into hot compressed steam, then this steam runs into pipes to a steam #turbine and expands, making work on turbine axis, turbine axis is connected to electric #generator, then
steam goes to the #condenser which is a heat exchanger where the steam condenses and returns into water, this water is sucked and compressed to the boiler by a #pump
The condenser is cooled by water from the cooling tower
This process is called #Rankine cycle
The gas power plant contains an air #compressor that compresses air into #combustion chamber where the fuel (diesel, gas) is burned inside the chamber producing
hot compressed gases.
Burning products gases go to the gas turbine where they expand and produce work, then ejected through the stack.Gas power plant fuel must be clean so it is not recommended to use oil or coal because they have a bad effect on turbine blades The gas turbine is more expensive than steam turbines
The gas turbine is less volume and less equipments than steam turbines
The gas power plant is easier to start up than steam power plants.
The combined power plant is a gas power plant that provides burning product gases after gas turbine stage to a boiler of steam power plant to make use of the heat of burning products gases from a gas turbine to generate steam in the boiler.
Combined power plants are more efficient than steam or gas power plants.