Drax Power Station (Like Fiddlers Ferry Power Station)

this is Drax a coal-fired power plant in England the size of two Manhattan Central Park's side-by-side this machine puts out almost 4,000 megawatts of power enough to light up five million homes this new-style coal burner has found a way to process and burn an old-style fuel and it does it so efficiently it's now among the cleanest mega coal plants in the world let's see how it works Trax burns up to thirty six thousand tons of coal every day that's twenty six train loads the trains dump the coal into giant hoppers they slow down but never stop every month they dump enough coal to fill a 70,000 seat football stadium but Drax doesn't burn chunks of rock it's not explosive enough so it converts the coal to dust a network of conveyors sends the raw coal to these pulverizing mills each mill has ten one ton steel balls packed together on a track coal drops into the mill through here and the ring of balls crushed the rock a single pulverizer makes 36 tons of coal dust in an hour and tracks has 60 of them the coal dust is now an explosive fuel lit up by propane and oil burners this coal dust and air mixture burns at over 2,000 degrees Celsius each boiler is a mega kettle with flames 5 stories high 10 stories above the flames inside a network of steel tubes water transforms to high-pressure steam hot enough to melt lead tracks is now ready to generate some serious electricity the steam heads to the Turbine Hall the turbines are housed in six units each the size of a locomotive inside five steam turbines each spins a drive shaft connected to a generator when the steam hits the turbines it's explosive pressure spins the blades at 3000 rpm the blade tips travel at one and a half times the speed of sound pumping out a million horsepower that's the same as 6500 passenger cars so burn coal boil water make steam and spend 300 tons of stainless steel at Mach 1.6 to create twenty three thousand volts of electricity voltage measures how powerfully electrons flow through a wire and racks needs much more than twenty three thousand volts to get power to its millions of customers to ramp up its voltage which helps electricity travel great distances you need a transformer Drax runs the twenty three thousand volts through a series of copper wire coils each wound around an iron core that creates a magnetic field power jumps from one coil to another when it goes from the loser coils to the tighter ones the voltage increases the Transformers at Drax take the twenty three thousand volts from the turbines and step it up to four hundred thousand which is great for the National Grid but what about this time burning coal is dirty business it belches out harmful gases that cause smog and acid rain Drax captures 90% of these toxic emissions before they hit the atmosphere smoke blows into these electrostatic precipitators toxic particles cling to these metal plates like fridge magnets as the smoke passes through but that filtered smoke still contains sulfur the culprit and acid rain so before it's sent to the smokestack it's cleaned again every week 10,000 tons of limestone is crushed into powder and mixed with water to form a slurry in this giant blender when smoke is pumped through the slurry sulphur is chemically locked into it the resulting combo makes 750,000 tons of gypsum every year the stuff that makes drywall and plaster board there's one last problem the power plant still has huge amounts of steam to deal with once it's done powering the turbines the steam needs to get back to the boilers for reheating but first it needs to turn back to water so the steam tubes are cooled by an outside source a heat exchanger that uses river water tracks uses 160 million litres of it every day from the river juice but while cooling the steam tubes the river water heats up to the boiling point to protect the local ecosystem it has to be cooled before being returned enter the cooling towers Drax has 12 2 for each boiler the base of each one could hold the dome of st. Paul's Cathedral the heated river water is piped into the 20 story towers then drops through tightly woven plastic and turns to a fine spray as heat rises the towers draw a cool dragon through the falling droplets the cooled water drops into ponds at the base of the towers and releases back to the river cleaner than when they took it out thirty-six thousand tons of coal burnt up in a day recovering most of its toxic emissions this machine has always been powerful but recent innovations have turned it into one of the cleanest plants of its size in the world

Channel: gxc2000

Views: 44,301

Rating: 4.5983262 out of 5

Keywords: Drax Power Station (Structure), Fiddlers Ferry Power Station (Structure)

Id: 45jB4_qy8bo

Length: 8min 8sec (488 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2015