Combined Cycle Power Plants – Condensate and Waterflow

A large part of Barnhart’s business includes heavy lifting and transport for power plants. From nuclear to coal, we have lifted and transported generators, feedwater heaters, transformers and more.

Unless you work in a power plant, most folks wouldn’t know a boiler from a super heater. Still yet, each power plant works somewhat differently depending on the type and fuel.

Most power plants transform some fuel into heat, or thermal energy. Heat then warms water into steam that will move a rotor, converting heated water into mechanical energy. And finally, a generator transforms the mechanical energy into electricity. This process is fairly common to all power plants.

The heat engine normally produces some exhaust heat. To improve on this inefficiency, a combined cycle will take the same process above but start with the exhaust heat of the initial heat engine, thus using more of the lost heat in the process.

Here’s a neat video on how combined cycle power plants work.