Checking the feasibility of setting up a cooling tower at Kota Super Thermal Power Station
Student name: Ms Sakshi Pathak
Guide: Prof R L Sawhney
Year of completion: 2013
Host Organisation: Kota Super Thermal Power Station, Kota, Rajasthan
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Er. R P Meena
Abstract: With the rising population of the world, the energy demand is also surging. Even though science
has made enough progress to generate electricity from a host of other fuels, India’s dependence
on coal for power generation has not come down significantly.
With increasing use is surging the demand as well as levels of harmful emissions in the
atmosphere. We need to bring down the coal usage by making the current methods more
effective. Coal is majorly used for electricity production in our country. About 57% of power
generation in India is sourced from coal. Thus, if we can improve the efficiency of the thermal
power plant, then we can reduce the coal consumption also. By using a cooling tower instead of
the traditional once-through-cooling system for cooling steam coming to the condenser, we can
improve the efficiency of the plant to some limit and thus reduce the coal usage.
At Kota Super Thermal Power Station, we have cooling towers installed for 2 units out of 7. To
deal with the aforesaid issues, I propose to put up a cooling tower at one of the other units. To
check the feasibility of setting up the cooling tower, I undertook secondary as well as primary
research. An in depth analysis of savings from all the possible modes, if we put up a cooling
tower, has been done. Expert opinion of environmentalists and of people from fields like fish
zoology proved to be quite handy.
The efficiency of the entire plant can be improved by 0.02% and coal to the tunes of 0.53% can
be saved annually at KSTPS. Though these savings may look small in percentage terms, but
when we look at the actual figures, this, by no means is a small achievement.
