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Monday 16th October
Year 8

Visit to Ironbridge Power Station

As an opportunity to see the application of their studies in the outside world, Mrs Hart and pupils from Year 8 visited Ironbridge Power Station to enhance their understanding of electrical energy.

Ironbridge Power Station

by Tom Niblock

Today we went to the coal-fired power station at Ironbridge in South Shropshire.  It has also had an industrial background with the world's first iron bridge, hence the name.

The power station burns coal to produce electricity.  The coal comes from Russia and it is shipped to Liverpool and there it gets put on a train to Ironbridge.  When it is there, they crush it up in a big washing machine like device, full of iron balls - 38 tonnes of iron balls.  They crush the coal up so it is as fine as talcum powder.  After that they fire it into the furnace which is hot, hot, hot.

Water is taken from the River Severn and purified to take out limescale and impurities which makes it 99.9% pure.  Why?  So they don't get limescale clogging up the tubes.  The water then goes into tubes inside the furnaces where it is boiled to 568C.  It then turns the turbines at 50 revolutions a second or 3,000 rpm.  They generate electricity with a coil and a magnet.  The steam then goes to the cooling towers and turns into clouds.

The power made goes to the National Grid where the power goes to anywhere on the system.  The transformers turn 22,000 volts into 400,000 volts which, in your home, turns back to 230 volts.

On the trip there were also activities to do.  My favourite one was the Van de Graaf generator which made static electricity and if you put your hair near it, it stuck to it.