MAGNETO HYDRO DYNAMIC POWER GENERATION

INTRODUCTION

It is well known that man had always been trying to fined something
new to achieve a new aims 80% of total electricity produced in the world is
hydral while remaining 20% is produced from nuclear, thermal, solar,
Geothermal energy and from magneto hydro dynamic power generation.
MHD power generation is a new system of electric power generation

which is said to be of high efficiency and low pollution. In advanced

countries MHD generator are widely used but in developing countries like

India it is still under construction. This construction work is in progress at

Tiruchirapalli in Tamilnadu unders joint efforts of BARC (Bhabha Atomic

Research Centre), BHEL, Associated Cement Corporation and Russian

technologists

. As its name implies, magneto-hydro-dynamic (MHD) is concerned

with the flow of conducting fluid in presence of magnetic and electric field.

This fluid may be gas at elevated

temperature or liquid metal like sodium

or potassium. A MHD generator is a

device for converting heat energy of fuel

directly into electric energy without a

conventional electric generator. The

basic difference between conventional

generator and MHD generator is in the

nature of conductor. Mhd Generator

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PRINCIPLE OF WORKING OF AN MHD GENERATOR

The basic principle of MHD is just similar to dynamo

except that the solid conductor of high electrical conductivity is

replaced by a gas with comparatively low value of electrical

conductivity. If the gas is heated to high temperature it gets

converted into plasma and plasma is conductor of electricity.

HOW AN MHD GENERATOR WORKS?

In an MHD generator, electrically conducting gas at a very high

temperature is passed at high velocity through a strong magnetic field at right

angles to the direction of flow, there by generating electrical energy. The

electrical energy is then collected from stationary electrodes placed on the

opposite sides of the channel. The current so obtained is direct current which can

be converted into ac by an inverter. Ionized gas can be produced by heating it

to a high temperature. On heating of a gas, the outer electrons escape out from

its atoms or molecules. The particles acquire an electric charge and the gases

passes into the state of plasma. However to achieve thermal ionization of

products of combustion of fossil fuels or inert gases extremely high

temperatures are necessary. Air becomes highly ionized at temperatures of

5,0000 to 6,0000C. To have a reasonable value of electrical conductivity of gases

at temperatures around 2,000 to 3,000 K by reasonable ionization, the gases are

seeded with additives of easily ionizing materials (Alkali metals) such as Cesium

or Potassium. The induced current are collected by suitably placed electrodes

and simplest system would carry direct current to the external load.

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Analysis
An induced emf depends on the velocity of plasma and magnetic

field strength. If V is a velocity of the plasma and B is the strength of magnetic

field at right angles to it, the emf E generated normal to the flow and normal to

the magnetic field is given by

E=V.B

This is the well known Hall effect observed in solids and liquids, and also

in gases under suitable conditions.

The output power per unit volume of such a system is given by

P = σ V 2 B 2 K (1 − K )

Where σ is the electrical conductivity of the gas and K is the load factor.

The load factor K is a measure of the emf E due to the flow of current

through the circuit and is given by

Closed Circuit Voltage

K= Open Circuit Voltage

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The recommended value of K=1/2 so the power output P per unit volume

is given by

σV 2 B 2
P=
4

CONFIGURATIONS
There are three possible arrangements of providing

electrodes for MHD generators.

1. Segmented electrode configuration:

The electrode segments are separated by insulator

segments so there will be no current flowing in the direction.

The electric field vector has a component both along the channel and across the

channel.

2. Continuous electrode configuration:

In this case the electric field is across the channel

only; but he current has components along the channel as

well as across it. In this case the hall angle is minimized

and thus the losses are reduced.

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3. Hall generator:

In this case the electrodes wrap up the channel all

the way in segment. The electric field becomes parallel to

the channel axis. Due to this reason there cannot be any

potential difference across the channel.

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TYPES OF MHD GENERATORS:

The MHD generators are classified into three groups as

• Open cycle MHD

• Closed cycle MHD

• Liquid Metal- Closed cycle MHD

Open cycle MHD

In this system the gaseous fuel produced from coal gasification plant is

supplied to the combustion chamber where it is burnt in the presence of high

pressure air (5ata). The gases coming out at high temperature (20000C) after

seeding is passed through MHD at a velocity of 700 to 800m/sec. The

interaction between the flowing plasma and magnetic field produces electricity.

The gas leaving the MHD still contains large amount of heat and seed material. It

is essential to recover the seed material and the heat from the gases to

economise the plant. The heat of the hot gases coming out from MHD is used for

steam generation before it is exhausted into atmosphere. The generated steam

is used in conventional steam power plants. The power from the generator

coupled to steam turbine and power from MHD after converting from dc to ac is

fed to the grid.

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This arrangement gives overall efficiency of MHD steam plant higher than that

of the conventional steam plant. It is estimated that the thermal efficiency of

MHD steam plant of 500MW capacity would be around 50% and efficiencies upto

60% are expected in future. The electrodes are usually made of graphite and the

duct of Boron nitride. Any type of fossil fuel can be used in MHD generator but a

direct coal fired MHD generator has following advantages:

1. Slag from coal combustion coats the generator electrodes and protects

from electrical and mechanical corrosion.

2. Coal contains less hydrogen and therefore the sink for electrons in the

flow created by the presence of OH ions is reduced.

3. Char, having almost no hydrogen is better than coal even. It results in a

25% increase in the performance of the generator.

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RESULTS

 An MHD generator of 16MW capacity based on open cycle plant

developed by Arnold, Engineering Development Centre in Jullahome

used to supply the power to a town of 5000 population.

 The largest generator todate working on open cycle without steam

cycle is the American AVCO company machine of 40MW gross

capacity.

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Closed cycle MHD

The closed cycle MHD using rare gases as working fluid is the most

promising system among all. The working of the system is exactly similar to

Open cycle MHD except the working fluid is continuously circulated in the cycle

instead of exhausting to the atmosphere. As there is no loss of working fluid this

can be chosen for its better heat transfer and electrical properties. The noble

gases with their low electron affinity are most suitable. With the use of noble gas

as working fluid it also becomes economical to use calcium instead of potassium

as seed material.

 The closed cycle MHD retains the seeding element, gives pollution

free operation and saves exhaust heat.

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Closed cycle MHD with Liquid Metal

The use of liquid metal instead of gas as a working fluid is proposed

since they have high electrical conductivity about 1 million times that of plasma.

Such a generator could be linked with thermal flux source such as breeder

reactor. The major difficulty in such a system is the production of the liquid flow

with high kinetic energy from a thermal power source. The liquid potassium

coming out of the Breeder reactor at high temperature is passed through a

nozzle to increase its velocity before passing to MHD generator. The vapours

formed due to nozzle action are separated in the separator and condensed and

pumped back to the reactor. The following are the advantages of Liquid metal

system:

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 The use of Nuclear energy as high temperature is not the

requirement of this system as in the case of a plasma converter.

 It can easily provide AC power supply directly, whereas it is

impossible to do so in a plasma system.

 The size of the system including that of magnets is comparatively

smaller. This is because of high power density.

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LIMITATIONS:

 The metallic vapors are poor electrical conductors.

 High velocities cannot be obtained by expansion in the system while it is

much easier to achieve a high fluid velocity employing a gas and a nozzle.

This is because the liquids are practically in compressible.

 The overall conversions efficiencies obtainable with liquid metal system

are quite below to that of plasma system

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ACHIEVEMENTS

 USSR has constructed a pilot plant of 75MW installed capacity, 25MW is

provided by the MHD generator. The fuel used is natural gas. The plant is

designated as “U-25”.

 A 5-15 MW thermal input pilot plant is being set up in India at

Tiruchirapalli. This plant uses fluidized bed combustion.

 Besides the use of MHD system for commercial electrical power

generation it has got other special uses. A major effort was made in U.S.A

use MHD as the conversion system in a nuclear electrical system for

space craft.

 In India also considerable studies have been carried out in this field under

the National Council of Science and Technology (NCST) .

 The Department of Science and Technology of government of India has

sponsored research and development programmes on coal based MHD

power generation.

 MHD conversion has also been considered for ship propulsion, airborne

applications, hypersonic wind tunnel experiments and for many other

defence applications.

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PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED IN DESIGN OF MHD

1. Sufficient high temperature for thermal ionization can be sustained by

refractory materials. A more practical method of reducing the required

temperature is by seeding.

2. Seed material potassium attacks insulating materials and make them

conducting.

3. Electrode materials are chemically eroded by combustion of gases.

4. The major problem forced by this generator is the economics. Although the

overall thermal efficiency is 60% against 40% for conventional thermal plant,

additional investment in the magnet, generator, duct, compressors,

scrubbers, seed recovery plant and DC to AC converters may increase the

plant cost and it may be much higher than conventional plant.

5. Most of the problems are related to material problems caused by high

temperature and highly corrosive and abrasive environment.

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Features of MHD:
Using this initial cycle as a model, the advantages of LMMHD include:

 The ability to tailor a system to any temperature range through the choice

of the working fluids, thus offering the potential to serve many special

needs at higher efficiencies than alternatives. Thus the concept was

originally proposed for space where a high radiator temperature is

essential for compact systems, and later modified for ground-based

applications. For example, both gas cycle and vapor cycle versions are

possible.

 The almost-constant-temperature expansion of the working fluid in

accelerating or pumping the liquid, leading thermodynamically to a higher

cycle efficiency. This corresponds to infinite reheat in a conventional

Rankine cycle.

 The high electrical conductivity of the liquid metal (as compared to the

plasmas used in other MHD systems).

The disadvantage is the losses associated with pumping or accelerating the

liquid metal. (The pumping process, which can occur inside the generator or in a

separate nozzle, effectively replaces the turbine in a conventional power plant.)

These losses may show up as pump power, increased pressure drop of the

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working fluid, etc. There are several types of losses unique to these two-phase

cycles, as can be seen from examining Fig. 1. These are:

 Mixer losses, pressure drops and poor mixing. In this cycle vaporization

of the liquid occurs partly or completely in the mixer.

 Slip losses in the nozzle or generator, where the vapor moves faster than

the liquid.

 Poor heat transfer between the two phases, impacting the desired almost-

constant-temperature expansion.

 Separation losses of two types, friction on the impact surface, and

incomplete separation (some liquid goes with the vapor, some vapor

 Stays as bubbles in the liquid). These are significant because of the

impact on other components, such as extra heat loss in the reject heat

exchanger and the next item.

 Diffuser losses in the liquid loop because of the vapor present.

The separation process can be particularly difficult because the desired

good mixing with small bubbles in a continuous matrix of liquid is particularly hard

to separate. We like to think of generating champagne foam that breaks down

easily, rather than a beer foam.

The goal is to build on the advantages while minimizing the disadvantages

or losses. Multiple cycles or concepts have been proposed in response to the

many needs and in attempts to minimize the losses, as mentioned above. They

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differ in the choices of mixing, acceleration or pumping, and separation

processes for the two fluids. The first were single-fluid systems, but their

efficiency tends to be lower [6]. Later cycles made improvements based on

careful study of the significant loss mechanisms in the earlier concepts [7].

Among these,

 The two-phase generator cycle, where the vapor/gas-liquid mixture is the

working fluid in the generator, and

 The OMACON (optimized MHD conversion system) cycle, which uses

natural circulation to minimize the losses associated with pumping the

liquid metal appear to be the most attractive. With limited space, only

these two concepts are described.

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ADVANTAGES OF MHD GENERATOR

1. Since high temperatures are involved, operational efficiency is high.

1. No moving part, so more reliable.

2. As there is no limitation to the size of the duct, so high capacity generators

are possible.

3. Ability of reaching the full power level instantly.

4. Conceptually these generators are very simpler.

5. The walls can be cooled below temperature of working gas.

6. The more efficient heat utilization reduces the amount of heat discharged

to environment and thus the cooling water requirements are reduced.

7. The capital costs of the MHD plants are estimated to be competitive with

those of coal fired steam power plants.

8. The overall costs of MHD power generation are estimated to be lower

(20%) than those of conventional power plants. This is because of higher

efficiency of MHD power generation.

9. The generator has high efficiency, construction is not limited by the

working temperature of the gas inside the duct but is controlled by the

nature of thermal source upstream of the generator.

10. Direct conversion of heat into electrical energy results in the elimination of

gas turbine and both the boiler and turbine and thus in the reduction of

energy losses.

11. The closed cycle system produces power, free of pollution.

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12. The size of the plant is considerably smaller than conventional fossil fuel

plants.

13. It can be started and put on the line within few seconds. It provides almost

instantaneous standby power.

14. It can be used most economically as peak load plant.

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Applications:

MHD is related to engineering problems such as plasma confinement,

liquid-metal cooling of nuclear reactors, and electromagnetic casting (among

others).

The first prototype of this kind of propulsion was built and tested in 1965

by Steward Way, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of

California, Santa Barbara. Way, on leave from his job at Westinghouse Electric,

assigned his senior year undergraduate students to develop a submarine with

this new propulsion system.[6] In early 1990s, Mitsubishi built a boat, the 'Yamato,'

which uses a magnetohydrodynamic drive, is driven by a liquid helium-cooled

superconductor, and can travel at 15 km/h.

MHD power generation fueled by potassium-seeded coal combustion gas

showed potential for more efficient energy conversion (the absence of solid

moving parts allows operation at higher temperatures), but failed due to cost

prohibitive technical difficulties.[7]

In microfluidic devices, the MHD pump is so far the most effective for

producing a continuous, nonpulsating flow in a complex microchannel design. It

was used to implement a PCR protocol.

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Ideal MHD is only strictly applicable when:

 The plasma is strongly collisional, so that the time scale of collisions is

shorter than the other characteristic times in the system, and the particle

distributions are therefore close to Maxwellian.

 The resistivity due to these collisions is small. In particular, the typical

magnetic diffusion times over any scale length present in the system must

be longer than any time scale of interest.

 We are interested in length scales much longer than the ion skin depth

and Larmor radius perpendicular to the field, long enough along the field

to ignore Landau damping, and time scales much longer than the ion

gyration time (system is smooth and slowly evolving).

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CONCLUSION:
The threat of disappearing of the fossil fuels within few decades

compel the human beings to search for new energy sources will last for a longer

time. Extensive research is going on in different countries through out the world

to find out the new resources to replace the conventional fossil one. With the

present research and development programmes, the non-conventional power

resources play an important role in the power industry . The magneto hydro

dynamic power generation is one of the examples of a new unique method of

generation of electricity. This power resource play a minor role presently and its

use on a vast scale is yet to be confirmed as it is in its childhood stage. Man

being optimistic should not leave the hopes on the success of this MHD

generator as the technology took the man to moon which was a dream long time

back, the same technology will help the human being to survive from the present

crisis of power shortage.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
• G.D RAI ,Non conventional energy sources.

• Bansal, J. L. (1994) Magnetofluiddynamics of Viscous Fluids Jaipur

Publishing House, Jaipur, India, OCLC 70267818

• Barbu, V. et al. (2003) "Exact controllability magneto-hydrodynamic

equations" Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 56: pp.

732-783.

• Biskamp, Dieter. Nonlinear Magnetohydrodynamics. Cambridge, England:

Cambridge University Press, 1993. 378 p. ISBN 0-521-59918-0

• Calvert, James B. (20 October 2002) "Magnetohydrodynamics: The

dynamics of conducting fluids in an electromagnetic field" (self published

by an Associate Professor Emeritus of Engineering, University of Denver,

U.S.A.)

• Davidson, Peter Alan (May 2001) An Introduction to

Magnetohydrodynamics Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

England, ISBN 0-521-79487-0

• Faraday, M. (1832). "Experimental Researches in Electricity." First Series,

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, pp. 125-162.

• Ferraro, Vincenzo Consolato Antonio and Plumpton, Charles. An

Introduction to Magneto-Fluid Mechanics, 2nd ed.

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