Practical Guide to Thermal Power Station Chemistry

The book is intended as a reference book for all coal or fossil fuel based thermal power plants in the world. It may also be used as a text book in the power training institutes or institute of power technology for courses in Power Station Chemistry. Although meant primarily for the chemistry graduates, Chemistry post graduates and Chemical engineers, it will be equally useful for power plant operational personnel.

In our country, until now, complete power plant chemistry is not taught as such. Chemists and engineers learn them during their job in power plant and the knowledge remains partial and in silos, this is an attempt to open the complete knowledge base including procedures of best practices. This book is intended to be a practical guide on  raw water treatment, pretreatment, DM plant, membrane technologies, different boiler water treatment technologies with guidelines, chemical analysis procedure of water, coal & lubricants, cooling water treatment and chemistries, heat transfer, boiler tube failure mechanism due to chemistry, coal sampling and GCV balancing across power station, stator water chemistry with many figures and tables.

While the power plant chemistry advanced with supercritical and ultra-critical technologies, with introduction of modern way of monitoring but after British Electricity International (BEI), London, Volume E, 1992, on Chemistry and Metallurgy, there was no text book written by any author on complete power plant chemistry practical aspects. No text book written by an Indian author is available on this subject. This book covers almost complete practical aspect of advanced power station chemistry. The present volume is meant to fill this gap. Throughout the text, attempts have been made to present the subject matter in a simple, lucid and precise manner, stress has been laid in making the reader understand the figures and tables.

It is regretted, however, that despite careful scrutiny of the proofs, printing or typographical mistakes may remain in the book. If such mistakes are pointed out by readers, the same will be gratefully received. Author has drawn heavily from the existing literatures on the subjects, for which he gratefully acknowledges. Lastly but most important, author want to than Shri. Purushottam Thakur, Head of Generation, The Tata Power Co. Ltd., who inspired him to start writing this book during author’s tenure with The Tata Power Co. Ltd.

Bangalore Soumitra Banerjee