On the way there we watched the "Family Guy" movie, it
had its moments, but overall its just a pile of TV
garbage |
Brett on the left and Kyle on the right, apparently
Family Guy isn't as interesting as the back of their eye
lids. |
After almost 3 hours on the bus... |
And this is Sheerness. The slanted thing you see
is where all the coal dust goes after combustion, they
transfer it and fill the emptied coal mines with it.
The stack is also made quite tall because Sheerness is
physically in a slightly dipped area. The 4 tubes
near the ground is where the coal gets transported into
the plant for combustion. |
This is one of the main generating turbines, there is a
fairly loud low frequency rumbling noise in this room, I
could hardly hear the tour guide shout. I did have
my ear plugs on however :) |
The turbine specs, like most industrial turbines this
one is hydrogen cooled |
Another look at the turbine and generator unit, there
are lots of other accessories connected, all the steam,
oil, cooling water connections. |
This is the control room (where I hope to be in pretty
soon!) Usually there is only 6 people on shift in
the plant, and 1 person in the control room.
Everything is computerized, but the buttons and knobs
are there, because you do need to manually operate and
isolate equipment. |
This is where Sheerness connects to the main grid |
The water treatment plant's control room, this board was
from the early 80s and the tour guide said it will be
torn down and replaced with a couple of computers not
long after our tour |
The water treatment plant purifies water so well that,
if you drank this water all day you would get sick!
(well thats what the tour guide said) Its hard to
remember the numbers now, but I recall the capacity of
this system is enough to cover about half of Calgary's
needs |
After coal is burnt, heavier ash falls down from the
fire into a water pit. The lighter "fly ash" gets
collected by these electro-static drums. Look at
all those dusty foot prints on the floor. No I
don't really want to work in a coal plant either. |
Here are half of the pulverizers (grinds the coal into
dust), surprisingly quiet |
On top of the power plant looking down at the cooling
pond. Incase you didn't know, the power plant
burns coal to generate steam, steam powers the turbines
to generate electricity, after the steam goes through
the turbine and most of the energy is used up, they use
cooling water from this pond to condense the steam and
reuse it again in another cycle. The waste heat is
enough to prevent practically the entire pond from
freezing in the winter. The tour guide was pretty
proud of that, although I think this waste of energy
isn't exactly funny... |
The stack in the foreground, and the coal dust
collecting bins (in beige) on the left. Thats
where the slanted transport line you saw goes. |
If you look closely (click for bigger picture), out in
the horizon you can see the big crane digger at one of
the coal mines |
This is the stream drum where the heated water turns
into steam, its running at a gazillion kPa pressure.
The tour guide said this drum has a 30cm thick wall to
contain the pressure (I believe it is 17000kPa or so,
and around 450 degrees C) |
This is the "bottom ash", the heavier ash that falls
after combustion and gets collected in the bottom of the
boiler. Water sits on the bottom so the ash sticks
there, and they separate it out and dump it back into
the emptied coal pits. |
Here is a little model of the entire plant, about 17
stories high, with a big ass fireball 8 stories high.
the dark green pipes are the Air inlets, and the yellow
pipes are the exhausts. |
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