UNREVEALED : “ IRON-ELECTRICITY”

                                                               

Importance Of Electricity: Scientific inventions have made this world worth living. They have provided us with various means of comforts and luxuries. The invention of electricity is one of the greatest of its wonders. Indeed, we cannot even dream of living in absence of electricity in modern times. There is no walk of life in which it is not used these days. They will clearly show its importance in our daily life.

            But unfortunately in our country its supply has not been able to meet the demand for it.

Some important stats:-

                        Above statistics shows how India is suffering from POWER DEFCIT.

            Electricity can be produced by many ways via thermal, hydro, solar etc., Of all these THERMAL POWER contributes 66% of total production whereas hydro electricity contributes 19% are the two major producers.

            One more important thing to consider is, India’s Economy too facing crisis situation and hence it is not so easy to meet the power requirements by establishing new projects, which is so tough at present times.

            Here is one solution to minimize defcit in our country without establishing new thermal plants. That is BY using IRON-STEEL PLANTS as a means of electricity by ENERGY TRANSFER principle. The working follows:

            In order to understand the entire process let’s have a small view about working of thermal power plants and iron & Steel plants.

Working of  THERMAL POWER PLANTS:

Detailed process of power generation in a thermal power plant:

1) Water intake: Firstly, water is taken into the boiler through a water source. If water is available in a plenty in the region, then the source is an open pond or river. If water is scarce, then it is recycled and the same water is used over and over again.

2) Boiler heating: The boiler is heated with the help of oil, coal or natural gas. A furnace is used to heat the fuel and supply the heat produced to the boiler. The increase in temperature helps in the transformation of water into steam.

3) Steam Turbine: The steam generated in the boiler is sent through a steam turbine. The turbine has blades that rotate when high velocity steam flows across them. This rotation of turbine blades is used to generate electricity.

4) Generator: A generator is connected to the steam turbine. When the turbine rotates, the generator produces electricity which is then passed on to the power distribution systems.

5) Special mountings: There is some other equipment like the economizer and air pre-heater. An economizer uses the heat from the exhaust gases to heat the feed water. An air pre-heater heats the air sent into the combustion chamber to improve the efficiency of the combustion process.

6) Ash collection system: There is a separate residue and ash collection system in place to collect all the waste materials from the combustion process and to prevent them from escaping into the atmosphere.

Apart from this, there are various other monitoring systems and instruments in place to keep track of the functioning of all the devices. This prevents any hazards from taking place in the plant. Consider the below example diagram:-

            Here for us the important step is BROILER HEATING , In order to heat the broiler(thereby to heat water) we use COAL at 1300 degree centigrade(this is our main focus).

Working of  IRON & STEEL PLANTS:

            Basic operation is : IRON ore digged from the earth are sent to the plants.

This iron ore is then heated, Ore," by its nature, is not pure stuff. Depending on the impurities, the melting point will vary. I believe the oxides are very common chemical ores of iron and there are            less common ones.

The chief iron ores are the oxides                                             

Hematite, Fe2O3 (1350C),

Magnetite, Fe3O4 (1420C),  

This is the major part required to consider for our study. 

            Here we need to consider the point that, The temperature required to heat the iron ore to melt is greater than the temperature required to heat water in the boilers(THERMAL POWER PLANTS)

            But we use coal in large amounts under both the cases in order to generate such high degree of temperature.

SOLUTION SUGGESTED:

          In order to find a solution we need to eye on another aspect which is density of iron is much greater than water, in such case molten iron ore can lasts heat far more time compared to water.

          Hence In order to heat the water in boilers of a thermal power plant we can use the heat generated by the molten iron ore by using the principle of  ENERGY TRANSFER.   

          This can be done by constructing a thermal plant along with the IRON-STEEL manufacturing plants using very high temparature coefficient material sheets for separation.

          Some of very high temparature metals are Tungsten has the highest melting point of the metals, 3410 deg C , Titanium (approx. 3200 degrees) and Manganese (2600) which are far ahead of iron ore melting and water boiling temapratures .

By doing so we can save the coal requirements and thereby can minimize the power defcit upto a good extent.