Cooling Water
Cooling water is taken up from the "service water pond", created by damming a small creek flowing from the north-west into the Chattahoochee River immediately on the south-eastern side of the plant.
At coal-fired units 1 and 2, water is converted to steam at 1,000 °F (540 °C) temperature and 3,600 psi (25 MPa) pressure. At full 920 MWe load, each turbine processes 6,200,000 pounds (2,800 metric tons) of steam per hour. Low pressure steam exits the turbine into a condenser where it is cooled and converted back into water to repeat the cycle. During this cooling process required by the second law of thermodynamics, waste heat from the condensing steam is absorbed by the warm water that circulates through the cooling towers, where it cools by evaporation and forced convection of air.
Read more about this topic: Hal B. Wansley Power Plant
Famous quotes related to cooling water:
“So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And He spat out the seven seas;
He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed;
He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled;
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.”
—James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938)