Geothermal Power Plant || Operation of Geothermal Plant

We have already discuss about power plant and hydropower plant. We are going to discuss about Geothermal Power Plant || Operation of  Geothermal Power Plant.

What is Geothermal Power Plant? 

In inner surface of earth, there is too hot part from that hot place water can be boiled and that hot steam can be used to generate electricity by using steam turbine  or others energy from that hot steam. The energy which is generated by using earth's core heat is known as geothermal energy and its plant is called geothermal power plant. In general practice, hydrothermal energy is mostly used from earth's core where water is heated by earth core and steam is used to rotate steam turbine to generate electricity. Natural or artificial hot springs or steam is used to extract geothermal energy i.e. there maybe natural place where hot steam is coming from earth surface or can artificially made the place where surface water can inlet to the core and hot steam get outlet to the turbine. The sources of geothermal energy are found along tectonic fault lines. This method is fairly matured and this energy is one of the alternative source of energy. Nowadays, New technologies are being developed to exploit hot dry rock (accessed by drilling deep into rock), geopressured resources (pressurized brine mixed with methane), and magma.

Operation of  Geothermal Power Plant

In geothermal power plant, about 2000 - 8000 feet depth of crest is used for heat exchange from that place with water. In the process of hydrothermal power plant, hot magma ‘seeps out’ from the cracks and fissures in the area of tectonic plate. When it comes near the surface rocks, it solidifies and becomes hot igneous rock and rainwater and ground water that finds its way down by naturally is heated by that rock and hot steam as well as trapped gases come out to the topmost layer through such fissures and remains trapped in the reservoir underground. In case of hot water springs, the upper rock layer has also fissures and comes out as hot water springs. That steam is used to rotate a special turbine(steam turbine) in a geothermal power plant . The turbine blades spin by the steam and the shaft from the turbine is connected to a generator to make electricity. The steam will cooled in a cooling tower. The cooled water is pumped back below ground to reheat by the earth core.  The hot rock depth may be from 1km to 6km.

Important components in Geothermal Station 

• Steam turbine :- it is rotated by steam and its shaft is connected to the shaft of generator which will generate electricity.
• water pumps :- It is used to pump the cooled as well as hot water.
• Compressor pumps :- This is used to pump steam.
• Water treatment plants :- In this plant, water is cooled and ready to go inside of earth core.
• Turbine and generator accessories :- These are needed for electricity production and transmission.

Advantage of geothermal power plants

Some advantages of thermal power plant is as follows:-

• Renewable source of energy
• No fuel needed so cheap operational cost.
• It does not produce any pollution.
• It doesn't contribute to greenhouse effect.
• It needs small place for power plant so less cost as compared to hydropower.

Disadvantage of geothermal power plants

Some advantages of thermal power plant is as follows:-

• Limited places to install power plant for energy generation.
• Hazardous gas may come with steam which is harmful for both plant(turbine) as well as human.

In conclusion, there are many advantages and disadvantages of it but due to renewable source of energy, it is widely used where it is viable in that land.