Anyone got a Match?

One of the things I love about my job is going to new places, interfacing with new people, and getting to see things the average Joe probably never sees. Last week, my job took me to a power plant. Now, of course I can’t tell you which one but I can tell you that it is a coal fired power plant somewhere in the U.S.

Everyone was really nice and safety was of the utmost concern. As you can probably imagine the plant was very utilitarian in nature and there wasn’t a whole lot of frills and cushy offices to be found. That’s not to say it was a dirty mess, though. They were very good at keeping the plant clean at all times and I only noticed a little bit of coal dust in a few key areas.

One of the things we don’t think about is how big these plants are. I guess we always see them from the road at about a mile or so and we never get up close. One of the things I was impressed with was the sheer size of the facility. Many people had bicycles that the rode around the plant because the distances between key areas was pretty far.
The other thing we don’t think about is all of the logistics in keeping one of these places running. Let me give you some examples:

This particular power plant has four main areas that generate power. They are each identical in nature.

Each one houses numerous control and monitoring systems for all of the various functions of the plant. If any of these should become unreachable for a few seconds it is considered a failure. If a failure occurs they have to shut down production. For that unit, identify the failure, and fire (literally) things back up.

Powering the plant are these massive turbine generators. The turbines are driven by steam and in turn spin a generator. The turbine engines are approximately 900,000 horsepower (so much for the dragsters being impressive). The power generated by the entire plant is 500-megwatts.

The water used for the steam is piped in and ultra-purified. Think of the most bad-ass fish-tank filter and RO system you have ever seen in your life, and then make one that is even better. They even go to the extent of taking the extra oxygen molecules out of the water.

What is heating the water to make it steam? This is where it gets really interesting.

A unit will burn through 300 TONS of coal an hour. 24 hours a day, 7-days a week, 365-days a year. I wasn’t impressed with the fact they burn through that much as I was impressed with the fact that there is that much coal available for them to burn. This was only one plant and it consumes 1200 tons an hour.

But the absolute coolest thing is what burns the coal. I always had this vision of some furnace where a belt or something fed coal into the furnace and you’d have this nice bed of coals heating up the water to make the steam.

Well, let’s just say I was far off the mark. Try to imagine these coal hoppers that go up several stories and funnel coal into grinders. Think of a badass coffee grinder and just make it REALLY big. That’s step #1.

Then spin up some 5000-horsepower fans and use the fans to blow the ground up coal through ducts that are about 4 or five feet across. Where do the ducts go? To the furnace of course!! But the ducts are connected to the furnace at one-story intervals and at multiple vertices (angles) into the furnace.

What results has ruined camping for me for the rest of my life. Never again will I even attempt to make the largest campfire that I can. I will scoff at people who stack trees and make bonfires in their fields. The Texas A&M bonfire paled in comparison.

Imagine if you will; a giant ball of fire that is approximately four-stories high (and equally as wide). It’s spinning counter-clockwise and is suspended in the air by its own heat and by the air blowing the coal into it. We were allowed to view this fireball up-close and personal by opening a viewing portal that is about 6-inches across and wearing a welding hood to view the fire. You had to wear the hood because of the intense heat, brightness of the fireball, and the massive amount of ultra-violet light being generated. It would fry your eyes out. And, in the event that the 5000-horsepower fans lost power for a moment the fireball might blow-back through the viewing port.

It was entirely insane and surreal at the same time. Naturally being a fire-bug I wanted to throw something in and see how fast it was incinerated, but they quickly grabbed my right hand as I was trying to stuff my entire leather-bound executive notepad set through the view port. I’m not even sure I was aware I was doing it.

And that’s it. I saw the giant ball of fire and it was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. Next time I am taking marshmallows and a really long stick.