GC: n
CT: Thermal power plants use water as working fluid. Nuclear and coal based power plants fall under this category. The way energy from fuel gets transformed into electricity forms the working of a power plant. In a thermal power plant a steam turbine is rotated with help of high pressure and high temperature steam and this rotation is transferred to a generator to produce electricity.
S: http://www.learnengineering.org/2013/01/thermal-power-plant-working.html (last access: 25 February 2015)
N: 1. – thermal (adj): 1756, “having to do with hot springs,” from French thermal (Buffon), from Greek therme “heat, feverish heat,” from PIE *gwher- “to heat, warm” (source also of Latin fornax “an oven, kiln,” formus “warm,” Old English wearm; see warm (adj.)). Sense of “having to do with heat” is first recorded 1837. The noun meaning “rising current of relatively warm air” is recorded from 1933.
– power (n): c. 1300, “ability; ability to act or do; strength, vigor, might,” especially in battle; “efficacy; control, mastery, lordship, dominion; legal power or authority; authorization; military force, an army,” from Anglo-French pouair, Old French povoir, noun use of the infinitive, “to be able,” earlier podir (9c.), from Vulgar Latin *potere, from Latin potis “powerful”.
Meaning “energy available for work is from 1727. Sense of “electrical supply” is from 1896.
– plant (n): Old English plante “young tree or shrub, herb newly planted,” from Latin planta “sprout, shoot, cutting” (source of Spanish planta, French plante), perhaps from *plantare “to drive in with the feet, push into the ground with the feet,” from planta “sole of the foot,” from nasalized form of PIE *plat- “to spread, flat”.
Broader sense of “any vegetable life, vegetation generally” is first recorded 1550s. Most extended usages are from the verb, on the notion of “something planted;” such as “construction for an industrial process,” 1789, at first with reference to the set-up of machinery, later also the building.
2. A facility to produce electric energy from thermal energy released by combustion of a fuel or consumption of a fissionable material.
3. Thermal power generation plant or thermal power station is the most conventional source of electric power. Thermal power plant is also referred as coal thermal power plant and steam turbine power plant. Before going into detail of this topic, we will try to understand the line diagram of electric power generation plant.
S: 1. OED – http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=thermal; http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=power+plant (last access: 5 January 2017). 2. TERMIUM PLUS (last access: 25 February 2015). 3. http://electrical4u.com/thermal-power-generation-plant-or-thermal-power-station/ (last access: 25 February 2015).
SYN: thermal power station, thermal plant, thermal generating, thermal electric power station, thermal electric generating plant, internal combustion power plant, thermal station.
S: TERMIUM PLUS (last access: 25 February 2015)
