Three cooling towers of Panipat Thermal Power Station demolished

Mukesh Tandon
Tribune News Service
Panipat, August 25

The cooling towers of three units of the Panipat Thermal Power Station (PTPS) on Assandh road were demolished technically on Sunday afternoon by using small dia emulsion explosive. 

All the three cooling towers of units 2, 3 and 4 bearing a height of 105 metres were demolished within 100 seconds.

The cooling tower of unit 1 was demolished on August 5.
The state government had decided to close the unit number 1 to 4 of 110-110 MW of PTPS as the units had completed their age in 2015.

SL Sachdeva, Chief Engineer, PTPS, said the units were auctioned by the national level authority and it was sold to highest bidder HR Commercial Private Limited, a firm in Mumbai.

The process of dismantling these four units was underway and the cooling towers were to be demolished under it, he said.

XEn Devender Yadav said the company hired a Jaipur-based company, Advanced Quarry Tech, to demolish the cooling tower under control blasting system.

Around 650 kg small dia emulsion explosive was used to demolish the three units, XEn Yadav said.

The cooling towers were fixed to demolish in 10 second intervals. As per the programme, the towers were demolished within only 100-120 seconds, he claimed.

Ambulance, fire tenders and police force were deployed to deal with any untoward situation but the operation completed peacefully, the chief engineer said.

Chief Engineer Sachdeva said the Assandh-Panipat road was closed for only 15 minutes for safety reasons during the demolition operation and it was completed successfully without any damage to surroundings.

The units 1 to 4 of PTPS were constructed in 1974 and completed in 1988.

Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, the then President of India, had inaugurated the unit 1. After that, four units 5 to 8 of 220-220 MW were constructed and the state government had decided to shut down the first four units.