It's reported that the blaze was in a cooling tower.
I thought cooling towers were made of concrete, with water vapour going up and water coming down. What's to burn?
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I'd exactly same thought BT.
Source of flames elsewhere, either in gas fired plant or generator, but cooling tower will 'draw' like a domestic chimney, sucking flames upwards?
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Whilst all the appliances show it was clearly a major incident, the films taken make it look much more dramatic than it is in reality. Its a strange phenomena caused by camera CCDs viewing large orange areas (fire) through steam.
There was a huge hoo haa recently claiming that a steam engine had a massive blow back, even made the inter web news, but it was just the firebox door open with the steam in the right direction filmed by a cheap camera that was too close and overloaded the ccd.
As far as cooling towers go, the ones in the gas fired stations are not the same as the large brick built ones on coal fired stations those simply rely on convection for draughting. The ones employed in gas fired station and much smaller squat semi Venturi with draughting powered by a large impeller of some kind. I bet the impeller equipment caught fire.
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I'd second that Zero. Those are induced draft towers - fans on the top to suck the air through. The packing inside that distributes the water to get good air/water contact is usually wood - and in this case it looks like the ducts on the top were wood too. It's pretty impressive to have actually manged to set fire to a load of wet wood in an environment that is air saturated with water though - must have been a pretty eipc fail on the fan! I suspect they will blank off the units that are damaged and re-start with the remainder, running the turbines at reduced capacity to match the available cooling capacity (which may in fact be close to 100% of load at this time of the year, struggle a bit in the summer though...
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Gypsum can be made as a byproduct from cooling towers. I don't know if Didcot do, it was a profitable sideline at Drax to justify a dedicated train to run from North York's. to British Gypsum in Derbyshire some years ago.
The main stand at St. James' Park, Newcastle was the largest cantilever roof at the time of opening built from the byproduct of nearby Blyth PS.
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I have often wondered what there is inside these towers. I imagine there must be baffles, to promote cooling. Is so, maybe they are made of hardwood?
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Guardian and Mail both have pictures:
www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/20/didcot-b-power-station-blaze-oxfordshire
Although the Mail describes fire as being in 'iconic' cooling towers what's in picture look more like low elevation metal structures (as one might expect with a modern gas fired plant)
EDIT - Cross post with Zero who supplies detail on towers.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Mon 20 Oct 14 at 09:14
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>> Guardian and Mail both have pictures:
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>> www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/20/didcot-b-power-station-blaze-oxfordshire
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>> Although the Mail describes fire as being in 'iconic' cooling towers
Good old mail, never let the facts soil a good story.
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Fireman on BBC news said that the internals of the tower were wood.
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A month ago it was stated that we have an excess of Electricity Capacity of 2 % - a small buffer before Power Cuts.
last week EDF announced that due to cracks in 2 of their Nuclear statiosn they will run at 75% capacity. Now a fire at Didcot!
Anybody any idea what is left of this 2% OR is it time to go an invest in a wee petrol generator from Makro? (and other suppliers!!!)
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Fortunately we have lots of wind turbines, and lots of wind coming. :)
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>> Fortunately we have lots of wind turbines, and lots of wind coming. :)
The irony of wind power is they have to shut them down and feather the blades in high winds.
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Now a cooling tower is 'iconic'.
What next, an 'iconic' London sewage works?
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>> What next, an 'iconic' London sewage works?
Already done:
www.crossness.org.uk/
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>> >> What next, an 'iconic' London sewage works?
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>> Already done:
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>> www.crossness.org.uk/
Yup, bin there done that, the engineering and attention to detail, in what after all is just a poo pump, is fantastic, and warrants the term iconic.
Cooling tower iconic? As a symbol, sign or representation of an age of power, progress, then yes. It helps that its a pleasing shape and issues forth benevolent looking clouds.
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Shame they only recently demolished the cooling towers from Didcot A, which had been turned off to satisfy the EU. All we need now is a cold winter...
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>>All we need now is a cold winter...
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They are like buses, we are bound to get a run of them eventually.
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'Iconic' isn't too strong a word for the Didcot A towers - of which three out of six are still standing, incidentally. They were the view from my bedroom window for my first 17 years, so I understand the affection they command in South Oxfordshire.
It was a filthy old lump, though, and rather than pay to modernize it to comply with our international commitments on pollution and climate change, nPower opted to shut it down. More to do with corporate short-termism than satisfying 'the EU' if you ask me. Gas is so cheap and easy - for now.
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We still rely pretty heavily on coal (see www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk ) and, as usual, we seem to be the only country taking EU 'large combustion plant' directives seriously. The Germans are even building new coal-fired stations to be fuelled with lignite, which is the really mucky stuff!
fixed the link for you
Last edited by: VxFan on Tue 21 Oct 14 at 01:20
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It's risen from the ashes and is up and running again. Well at half capacity anyway.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-29814291
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Didcot power station fire - Bromptonaut
