Thermal and Hydel Power in Pakistan

Thermal and Hydel Power in Pakistan

  August 29, 2019    Fantasy

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 Thermal Electricity Definition

•    Electricity is a flexible form of energy that can be easily converted to heat, light or sound energy.
•    Electricity that is generated by non-renewable resources like oil, coal, gas, nuclear fuel is called "thermal electricity".
•    Fossil fuels and nuclear power stations produce heat energy. This is used to turn water into steam which is then used to run turbines.

Process of electricity generation

•    Fossil fuel (coal, oil or gas) is burnt to produce steam
•    This steam moves the turbines to generate electricity
•    Transformers control the voltage and transfer electricity to pylons through transmission lines

Hydro-electric Power (HEP)

Definition

Hydro-electric power stations use the force of flowing water to spin the hydro-turbines.

Process of electricity generation

•    From a hydro-turbine there is a shaft going into the generator.
•    Because the water has made the hydro turbine spin rapidly this shaft spins rapidly inside a magnetic field in the generator and this generates electricity.
•    The electric current is regulated by the transformer and sent through the power line at the required voltage

Reasons for HEP to be best in northern areas

HEP is best developed in the mountainous regions because
•    precipitation is adequate
•    there is a steep slope or gradient

Arguments in favor of Thermal Power Station

Will get exhausted

•    Fossil fuels will eventually be exhausted.

Cause pollution

•    Fossil fuels cause pollution when they are burnt and are not environmentally friendly

Easy to set up anywhere

•    Thermal power stations can be developed at any place where fossil fuels are available.

Less expensive to build

•    Thermal power stations are less expensive to build than HEP stations, but, except for nuclear power stations, running costs are very high.
•    Nuclear power stations are very expensive to decommission.

Arguments in favor of HEP

Will not be exhausted

•    Water is a renewable resource, which is used to generate HEP and it will not be exhausted.

Environment friendly

•    HEP is referred to as white coal. It produces power without anything having to be burnt.

Can only be setup at specific location

•    HEP stations have certain physical and climatic requirements for their development.

Setup cost is high running cost low

•    The initial cost for the construction of an HEP station is very high but the running costs are low.

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Nuclear Energy and Pakistan

Nuclear Energy and Pakistan

  August 29, 2019    Fantasy

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Definition

•    Nuclear energy is power that is released from atoms.
 

Basic Concept

•    It is the most powerful source of energy.
•    It is the energy that powers the sun.
•    In atomic fission, energy is released when atoms split into smaller atoms.
•    In atomic fusion, energy is released when atoms are joined together to form a bigger atom that releases energy.
•    At present nuclear power stations are based on atomic fission.
 

For Electricity generation

•    Nuclear power stations produce energy in much the same way as those using fossil fuels.
•    Both types use heat energy to make steam, which turns the turbines that make the electricity.
 

 Nuclear energy and Pakistan

•    Many of the advanced countries of the world have developed their nuclear energy resources to a great extent.
•    Pakistan is also utilizing nuclear energy for electricity generation.

Karachi Nuclear Power Plant

•    The Karachi Nuclear Power Plant was commissioned in 1971 as the first nuclear power station. It has an installed capacity of 137 MW.

Chasma Nuclear Power Plant

•    The second nuclear power plant, Chashma Nuclear Power Plant, was constructed under a contract between the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and the China National Nuclear Corporation.
•    The plant was commissioned in 1999.
 

Arguments in against of using Nuclear Energy:

Emission of dangerous rays

•    The fuel rods in reactors produce dangerous rays. People exposed to the rays get cancer, and their children can be born deformed.

Harmful Nuclear wastes

•    Nuclear waste can remain radioactive for many years. There are problems with reprocessing and storing nuclear waste.

Lack of financial sources

•    Pakistan does not have enough financial resources to build more nuclear power stations. The burden of foreign loans is already crushing our economy.

Alternative renewable sources

•    Pakistan has enough renewable resources like winds in southern areas, water, sunlight etc. Instead of developing nuclear energy, we should rely on renewable resources.
 

Arguments in favor of using Nuclear Energy:

Depletion of natural resources

•    Pakistan is already deficient in coal and oil. Natural gas reserves will be exhausted one day.
•    Nuclear energy can solve our energy problem.
•    A small quantity of uranium can generate large amount of energy.
•    Less than half kg of uranium contains 3 million more times energy than the same weight of coal.

Less risky

•    The chances of accidents in nuclear power stations are very low.
•    There have been fewer accidents amongst nuclear power workers, than any other kind of power workers.

Ideal for industrialization

•    Pakistan is a developing country which is in the process of industrialization. Nuclear energy can speed up this process.

Comparatively causes less pollution

•    Nuclear Power is believed to contribute less than conventional fuels to the green¬house effect and acid rain.

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Natural Gas

Natural Gas

  August 29, 2019    Fantasy

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•    Natural Gas is an important fuel found in oil bearing rocks above the oil

Extraction

•    These rocks have millions of tiny holes which act like a sponge and soak up the gas as it is formed
•    Above the rock there is a layer of non-porous rocks that trap the gas underground and stop it from leaking out to the surface

Composition

•    Natural gas is made up many gases like methane, ethane, propane and butanes

Discovery

•    It was discovered in 1952 at Sui, Baluchistan by Pakistan Petroleum Limited while drilling in search of oil
•    The gas field is considered to be one of the largest in the world

Distribution to Karachi

•    Soon after discovery, a pipeline to Karachi was completed to provide cheap fuel to industrial city.

Distribution to Multan

•    Another pipeline to Multan was completed in 1958 to supply gas to the thermal power station and fertilizer plant.
•    This pipeline has been extended to Faisalabad where another gas-fired power station has been set up and it has been further extended to Lahore.

Distribution to northern areas

•    It was also taken to Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Peshawar.

Distribution to Quetta

•    A pipeline also goes to Quetta from Sui. More gas fields have been discovered since then.

Liquefied Petroleum Gas LPG

•    When natural gas is cooled to a very low temperature it turns into a liquid.
•    This liquid is called liquefied petroleum gas or LPG.
•    It can be moved from place to place in special cylinders.
•    In mountainous areas like Murree, Gilgit, Abbottabad, where there are no gas pipelines, many people use LPG for heating and cooking.

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Mineral Oil - Petrleum or Black Gold

Mineral Oil - Petrleum or Black Gold

  August 28, 2019    Fantasy

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Definition

Mineral Oil is the most important fossil fuel today

Occurrence of Mineral Oil

•    It occurs in porous spaces of sedimentary rocks and is derived mainly from the decomposition of marine animal and vegetative matter over several million years.

•    It can be found many hundreds of meters underground or under the seabed.

•    It mainly occurs in dome shaped anticlines between two layers of non-porous rocks.

•    The oil is trapped in the anticline with gas above and water below.

Oil Prospecting and Drilling:

•    Oil is normally trapped deep underground

•    It has been known to leak up to form puddles on the surface. This was how people first discovered oil.

•    Now, wells are drilled to pump this liquid fuel out of the ground and requires modern scientific equipment

•    Once the drilling site has been selected, a derrick or drilling rig is set up.

•    The derrick is a large steel structure that holds the drilling pipes and other equipment.

Oil Refining:

•    Crude oil cannot be used in its raw state

•    It has to be processed and refined into useful products

•    Like Petrol for cars and airplanes

•    Heating oil

•    Kerosene

•    Diesel oil for trucks and buses

•    It is cheaper to import crude oil and refine it locally for domestic and industrial use than to import refined products.

Location of Oil Refineries

In or near the oil fields

•    Attock Oil Refinery located on the Potwar Plateau at Morga

At the port of import

•    Pakistan Refinery and

•    National Refinery located in Karachi

These two refineries also refine crude oil drilled in the lower Sindh oil fields.

Factors determining location of refinery:

•    Market or demand factor is important in location of oil refineries

•    If oil refineries are located near the industrial and commercial urban centers with high population density, transportation and distribution of refined oil is convenient and cost effective.

•    A substantial proportion of Pakistan's import bill is spent on petroleum products which is a great burden on Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves

Use of Oil

Uses of by – products

•    Paraffin

•    Wax

•    Plastics

•    Synthetic Rubber

•    Detergents

•    Insecticides

•    Pharmaceutical Products

•    Chemical Products

•    Furnace Oil

Source of Power

•    Thermal Electricity

•    For Heating

As a Lubricant

As an indispensable motor fuel

Patrol

•    Air Crafts

•    Cars

Diesel

•    Buses

•    Rail engines

•    Trucks

Transportation of Imported and Local Petroleum

Transport at sea:

•    Imports from Saudi Arabia and UAE

•    Pakistan's imported petroleum, both crude and refined, is transported by sea from oil producing countries, especially from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

•    Imported through Oil Tankers

•    It is transported in special ships called 'oil tankers'.

Keamari Port

•    At Keamari (Karachi) Port or Port Qasim, the oil tanker is berthed at the designated oil pier.

•    The pier is a platform with an oil handling system.

•    Through the pier the ship is connected to the oil handling system.

•    The oil products (crude or refined) are pumped from the oil tanker ship to the oil marketing companies/refineries storage tanks at Keamari and Korangi.

•    The products may be further transported up country.

Transport on land

•    On land oil is transported in 3 ways

o    By pipeline

o    By road tanker

o    By rail tanker

•    Transportation by road and rail tankers is relatively costly, time-consuming and inefficient as compared to transmission by pipelines.

•    Movement of these products by road is not only dangerous for traffic but, because of their weight, it can also cause extreme degradation to the existing road surface and be a danger to human lives.

•    Pipeline transporta¬tion is the most efficient, convenient and cheapest mode of transportation besides being far more environmentally friendly.

Crude oil:

•    Crude oil is pumped through pipes from the oil tankers at the oil terminals on the coast to the refineries nearby.

•    The Pak Arab Refinery Company (PARCO) is playing an important role in the inland transportation of crude oil from Karachi.

•    A pipeline has been constructed from Karachi port to PARCO's mid-country refinery located at Mehmood Kot for transportation of crude oil.

•    After refining the crude oil it is supplied to the up and mid-country.

Refined oil:

•    The refined petroleum products are transported from Karachi up country by road and rail tankers to be supplied to petrol stations and other customers.

•    Within Karachi, oil is transported through the pipelines to the storage tanks of the oil companies like PSO, Caltex, Shell etc.

•    Consumers directly buy petroleum products from the respective petrol pumps of these companies.

PARCO's Projects for the Transportation of Oil:

•    In 2002 PARCO launched a White Oil Pipeline Project (WOPP) which will carry refined oil from Karachi to the north.

•    After conversion of PARCO's existing pipeline network for crude oil transportation, the White Oil Pipeline will be used for the transport of refined petroleum products to the central and northern regions of Pakistan.

•    These areas account for almost 60% of the total petroleum consumption in the country.

•    Bin Qasim Port will be the initiation point of the White Oil Pipeline Project, where the refined products will be unloaded from the ships into the pipeline for onward transportation to the country's northern and central regions.

•    The new underground pipeline costing $ 480 million will also carry refined oil from the Pakistan Oil Refinery at Port Qasim to Mahmood Kot in district Muzaffargarh covering a distance of 817 km.

•    The demand for petroleum products is rising at a rate of 10% per annum up country.

•    The Project will also create employment opportuni¬ties in many areas of the country and will contribute to the economic welfare of the people and the country. This will have a stabilizing effect on all sectors of the country's economy.

Production of Oil:

•    Pakistan is deficient in mineral oil resources.
•    According to some geologists favorable structural traps are found in large areas of Pakistan.
•    Since 1947 many major discoveries were made in Punjab and Sindh and drilling activities were enhanced in the 1980s and 1990s.
•    However, oil is still the major import item in Pakistan.

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Coal - Non-renewable Resource of Energy

Coal - Non-renewable Resource of Energy

  August 27, 2019    Fantasy

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Non - renewable Energy Resources - Coal:

• Coal is a very old fossil fuel
• The better types of coal have taken several hundred million years to form.

Formation of Coal:

• Coal is formed by the decomposition of natural vegetation, especially equatorial swamp forest.
  

  Types of Coal and their characteristics

  

Anthracite

• Best quality coal
• Hardest
• Highest hydrocarbon content
• Burns quietly with great heat
• Blackest coal of all
• Formed in very thin layers deep underground

Bituminous

• Darker in color
• Formed deep underground

Bituminous as Steam Coal

• A superior black hard coal found in highly compressed seams
• Burns readily with great heat
• Hydrocarbon content is less than anthracite

Bituminous as Coking Coal

• It is burnt to produce coke – a hard grey porous material
• It is used in blast furnaces for the extraction of iron from iron ore

Lignite 

• It is a lower quality coal with a high moisture and ash content
• It has a low heating value
• Present near the surface and it is easier to mine

Peat

• Exclusively vegetative matter
• Represents initial stage of coal formation
• Its carbon content is low

Transportation of coal from the coal mine to the end user

• Extraction of coal from the coalface and crushed
• Loaded onto trolleys which run on a track
• Track leads from the coalmine to the outside surface
• Small coalmines use donkeys as an underground transport
• Once the coal comes out of the mine, the qualities of coal are separated
• Sold to the middleman who further loads it into trucks and supplies it to the brick kilns and cement factories etc where it is used as a fuel
• When the coal is supplied to thermal power stations, rail transport is also used if it is economically feasible

Coal Extraction with respect to Provinces

Province Baluchistan

• Location of Coal: Quetta Coalfields
• Type of Coal: Coking coal locally – Sharig Coal
• Uses: Coking coal is converted into metallurgical coal by mixing with high grade imported coal,Supplied to Pakistan Steel Mills, Sub-bituminous coal is used in brick kilns and for briquetting

Province Sindh

• Location of Coal: Lower Sindh Coalfields
• Type of Coal: Lignite, low quality
• Uses: For heating boilers in the thermal power stations

Province Punjab

• Location of Coal: Salt Range coalfields
• Type of Coal: Sub-bituminous to lignite,Highly volatile, Deteriorates when stored, Poor quality,
• Uses: Used in brick kilns.

Province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

• Location of Coal: Makerwal coalfields in trans Salt Range, Some sporadic mining is reported from Charat
• Type of Coal: Sub-bituminous, Seams are slightly thicker,Coal is slightly better quality than in the Salt Range coalfield
• Uses: Used in the ceramic industry.

Reasons for Coal as a preferred source of power in near future:

New coal reserves

• Discovery of new coal reserves in recent years
• It is estimated that Pakistan has 7508 million tones of proven coal reserves in eight major fields in Lower Sindh and the Salt Range.

Coal reserves in greater quantity

• According to one study, the coal reserves in the country are many times greater than the total reserves of natural gas and oil.

Saving of foreign exchange

• To save tremendous amount of foreign exchange which is involved in the import of oil

Cheaper

• Cheaper than natural gas so it is used as an alternate source of fuel specially in cement industry

Using latest technology

• The focus of the government's policy is on aggressive coal-mining and modern usage of coal, using the latest technologies, including those developed over the years by the Americans, Europeans and Chinese.

Power generation

• Focus of the coal policy is on power generation through coal and gasification of coal so that it could be used as a cheap fuel.

As a fuel for industries

• Through gasification the fuel companies convert coal into easily transportable coal gas or liquid fuels
• The coal is heated in the presence of steam and oxygen to produce coal gas which is a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen and methane.
• It is directly used as a fuel or refined into cleaner-burning gas to make it environment friendly.
• Coal based vapor fuels are produced through this process

Government’s will

• Government needs to improve and modernize coal mining operations to increase the use of coal in industries

Process of using coal in Iron and Steel Industry:

• Heating coal
• Converting it into coke - a hard substance consisting of nearly pure carbon
• Combining coke with iron ore and limestone
• The mixture is heated to extract the iron from the iron ore
• Other industries use the different coal gases emitted during the coke-forming in order to make fertilizers, solvents, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and other products.

Power generation using Coal

Arguments against (Environmental Loss)

• Not advisable to build coal fired power plants close to River Indus
• Coal fired power plants are largest source of fly ash and mercury pollution falls into nearby rivers where it builds up in fish
• Upon consumption of mercury polluted fish people suffer from brain damage and nervous system disorders, particularly in young children
• Fly ash could cause lowered crop yield, respiratory disorders, contamination of groundwater with toxic salts and metallic contents

Arguments in favor (Economic Gains)

• To overcome energy crisis Pakistan has to rely on coal
• Huge reserves of Thar Coal field could be utilized
• Coal could be exported to India
• Cheap electricity could be produced
• Foreign exchange could be saved by not importing expensive oil

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Introduction of Energy, Types, Forms, Uses of Renewable and Non-renewable

Introduction of Energy, Types, Forms, Uses of Renewable and Non-renewable

  August 27, 2019    Fantasy

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Energy:

Energy can be obtained from various sources. 

Major sources through which energy can be obtained include fuels, water, wind and sunlight.

Types of resources

Renewable
Non renewable
 

Forms of Energy:

Energy exists in various forms e.g. heat, light, electrical and chemical.
All forms of energy can be converted into power, 'which can be used to do work.
For example, when petrol or diesel is burnt in a car engine, its chemical energy is used to make the car move.
Electricity is used to operate machines and appliances.

Types of Resources of energy

 Fossil Fuels are non – Renewable

Power Resources	Uses
Coal	Industrial Process Electricity generation Domestic Heating
Mineral Oil	Fuels for vehicles Electricity generation Sources of chemicals
Natural Gas	Domestic cooking and heating Electricity generation Industrial uses (as a fuel and for making fertilizers)
Nuclear Fuel Uranium	Electricity generation

Renewable Resources

Power Resource	Uses
Water	Hydro-electric
Solar Power	Electricity generation
Wind, Wave, Geothermal and Tidal Power	Not developed in Pakistan yet

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