Power Plants? What are they? Do they harm the enviorment? How?

Question

Power Plants? What are they? Do they harm the enviorment? How? Basicallyyyy i have no idea what power plants do/are and dont they do harm by the electricity we use? well im doing a sppech on power plants so give me a 101 on power plants! thanks.

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Answer 1

A power plant (also referred to as generating station or power station) is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power.  At the center of nearly all power plants is a generator, a rotating machine that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy by creating relative motion between a magnetic field and a conductor. The energy source harnessed to turn the generator varies widely. It depends chiefly on what fuels are easily available and the types of technology that the power company has access to.

In thermal power plants, mechanical power is produced by a heat engine, which transforms thermal energy, often from combustion of a fuel, into rotational energy. Most thermal power plants produce steam, and these are sometimes called steam power plants. About 86% of all electric power is generated by use of steam turbines.[citation needed] Not all thermal energy can be transformed to mechanical power, according to the second law of thermodynamics. Therefore, there is always heat lost to the environment. If this loss is employed as useful heat, for industrial processes or district heating, the power plant is referred to as a cogeneration power plant or CHP (combined heat-and-power) plant. In countries where district heating is common, there are dedicated heat plants called heat-only boiler stations. An important class of power stations in the Middle East uses byproduct heat for desalination of water.

Classification



Thermal power plants are classified by the type of fuel and the type of prime mover installed.

By fuel :

Nuclear power plants[4] use a nuclear reactor's heat to operate a steam turbine generator.

Fossil fuelled power plants may also use a steam turbine generator or in the case of natural gas fired plants may use a combustion turbine.

Geothermal power plants use steam extracted from hot underground rocks.

Renewable energy plants may be fuelled by waste from sugar cane, municipal solid waste, landfill methane, or other forms of biomass.

In integrated steel mills, blast furnace exhaust gas is a low-cost, although low-energy-density, fuel.

Waste heat from industrial processes is occasionally concentrated enough to use for power generation, usually in a steam boiler and turbine.

By prime mover:

Steam turbine plants use the dynamic pressure generated by expanding steam to turn the blades of a turbine. Almost all large non-hydro plants use this system.

Gas turbine plants use the dynamic pressure from flowing gases to directly operate the turbine. Natural-gas fuelled turbine plants can start rapidly and so are used to supply "peak" energy during periods of high demand, though at higher cost than base-loaded plants. These may be comparatively small units, and sometimes completely unmanned, being remotely operated. This type was pioneered by the UK, Princetown[5] being the world's first, commissioned in 1959.

Combined cycle plants have both a gas turbine fired by natural gas, and a steam boiler and steam turbine which use the exhaust gas from the gas turbine to produce electricity. This greatly increases the overall efficiency of the plant, and many new baseload power plants are combined cycle plants fired by natural gas.

Internal combustion Reciprocating engines are used to provide power for isolated communities and are frequently used for small cogeneration plants. Hospitals, office buildings, industrial plants, and other critical facilities also use them to provide backup power in case of a power outage. These are usually fuelled by diesel oil, heavy oil, natural gas and landfill gas.

Microturbines, Stirling engine and internal combustion reciprocating engines are low cost solutions for using opportunity fuels, such as landfill gas, digester gas from water treatment plants and waste gas from oil production.

The environment impact usually come from powerplant that uses fossil fuel (such as coal) to produce steam.  Geothermal powerplant is a clean powerplant because it gets the steam from the earth not from a boiler (that needs fuel).

Answer 2

power plants are where there are machines where companies either produce electricity or machines work and make a product.

trust me ive been to one

power plants polute the air and it could poison you

we need to get more resources where they make electricity

because we are runinng out of ways to make electricity thus making it hard to live without stoves heat and the most important thing we use are lights computers chargers but there is a way to help power plants make power and electricity dont leave chargers plugged in when not in use turn off things that arent needed.What I had heard about power plants is that their power goes to companies or places where wal mart works or sams club works and other stores producing things and they use electricity.

so thats a reason to save electricity we would have no power if we ran out of electricity no food, heat, stores,

and tv,chargers,computers,cell phones , and last light

This is all true hope you get an A+ 100%A!

Hope I helped

Answer 3

yes but i don't know how.

Answer 4

Um,  we need power.. They make power for electric.