<h2>STEAM POWER PLANT </h2>

A steam power plant continuously converts the energy stored ill fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) or fissile fuels (uranium, thorium) into shaft work and ultimately into electricity. The working fluid is water which is sometimes in the liquid phase and sometimes in the vapour phase during its cycle of operations. Figure 2.1 illustrates a fossil fulled power plant as a bulk energy converter from fuel to electricity using water as the working medium. Energy released by the burning of fuel is transferred to water in the boiler (8) to generate steam at a high pressure and temperature, which then expands in the turbine (n to a low pressure to produce shaft work. The steam leaving the turbine is condensed into water in the condenser (C) where cooling water from a river or sea circulates carrying away the heat released during condensation. The water (condensate) is then fed back to the boiler by the pump (P). and the cycle goes on repealing- . Itself. The working substance, water, thus follows along the B-T- C-P path of the cycle interacting externally as shown. Since the fluid isundergoing a cyclic 

process, there will be no net change in its internal energy over the cycle , dE = 0), and consequently, the net energy 'transferred to the unit mass of the ~uid as heat during the cycle must equal the net energy transfer as work from e fluid.