An Analysis of Water Characteristics of Shiddhirganj 210MW Steam Power Plant, Sirajganj 225MW Combined Cycle Power Plants and Rooppur 2400MW Nuclear Power Plant in Bangladesh: A Comparative Study of Power Plant Grade Water

Abstract

Water quality has long been an important part of the operation of nuclear and thermal power plants. Water is used as a working and cooling fluid in power plants. The quality of source water to be used in the power plants after treatment should conform to the prescribed values of Physico-Chemical properties like pH, EC, TDS, Alkalinity, Hardness, presence of Chloride content, Silica, and Heavy metals as recommended by technical guidelines. To analyze the water characteristics, water samples were collected from various sources. Two river water samples and a groundwater sample (marked as PP1, PP2, and NPP site) were tested to determine the water properties. The Physico-chemical properties of the water samples were determined using various analytical tests. Heavy metals were also investigated using the Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometric (AAS) process. The Physico-chemical properties of investigated samples were so good as to the recommended values of the World Health Organization (WHO), United States of Public Health (USPH), and Bangladesh Environmental Department. But the values were very far from the recommended values for thermal power plants operation. So, it needs to treat to use in the boilers. Gravitation, Carbon filtration, Ion exchange method, and Reverse Osmosis (RO) are good ways to treat the water before use in power plants. The Padma River water is better than the other two samples when the Physico-chemical characteristics of the sample waters were analyzed to the prescribed levels for the boiler water of a thermal power plant and the secondary water circuit of a third-generation nuclear PWR reactor. The aim of this work is to explore the difference between the source water quality parameters values and those of the recommended values of technical guidelines. To minimize the water treatment cost, a new site for the installation of a power plant project in Bangladesh can be advocated depending on the availability of good quality water.

Water Chemistry in Nuclear Power Plant

“…Hydropower plants, which employ dams and other methods to create energy in moving water, rely heavily on water. The flowing water drives the rotating blades, which spin a generator, and mechanical energy is converted into electrical energy by the spinning of turbines [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Hydroelectric power generates a significant amount of the world's electricity.…”

“…PWRs are a type of pressurized water reactor that uses ordinary water as a controller and coolant. A main cooling circuit that runs under tremendous pressure through the reactor core and a secondary circuit that creates steam to power the turbine define the architecture [15][16][17]. The heat from the reactor's fuel rods was transported to a primary circuit that held water.…”

“…Many attempts have been made to address the drawbacks of deionization and distilled. The cartridges survive significantly longer in some configurations where distillation precedes deionization, but the concerns of bacterial contamination persist [15].…”