Huge Boiling Station to Heat Million Houses

All houses in Russian cities are heated by one source, which is called TPP (thermal power plant). They heat water and spread it over the city via special hot pipes to provide warmth to houses. Krasnoyarsk is a big Russian city where eight months of a year are freezing cold. And how can such a large Siberian city be heated from one source? It’s impossible. So the city has three sources like this. One of them is TPP – 3.

The thermal capacity of the TPP is 631.5 Gcal / h.

Everything starts from fuel (coal, gas, peat, oil shale). This plant uses brown coal from the coal mine which is 162 km away from the TPP. It’s transported by railway. Some part of it is stored, another one is crushed to dust and supplied to the combustion chamber – the steam boiler.

The coal is poured into such bunkers.

This is a fuel conveying system.

Here the coal is crushed and sent to the boiler.

The steam coiler weighs more than 7000 tons. It is 78 meters (256 ft) high.

The boiler capacity is 670 tons of steam per hour.

Here is the view of the boiler from above.

The boiler drum is a horizontal cylindrical vessel having a volume of water and steam, which are separated by a so-called evaporation mirror.

Cooled flue gases (about 130 degrees) come out of the furnace to electric filters where they are purified from ash.

The steam is heated to 545 degrees and comes to the turbine where, under its pressure, the rotor of the turbogenerator rotates to produce energy.

TPP – 3 uses a direct-flow water supply system, it eliminates the use of cooling towers. The water is taken from the Yenisei river, purified and desalted. After being used it goes back to the river through the special system where hot water is mixed with cold one to decrease thermal pollution of the river.