Design Principles and Sizing Approach of Unfired Once-Through Steam Generators
One of the key elements of increasing the thermal efficiency of a combined cycle power plant (CCPP) is to improve the design and operation of the heat recovery steam generators (HRSG) utilized in the cycle. Once-through steam generator (OTSG) is a new technology introduced for heat recovery in power systems. It eliminates boiler drums and other components of conventional HRSGs. The simplicity and compactness of an OTSG justifies its application in combined cycle power plants. This paper describes a design principle and an analytical sizing approach that will assist OTSG’s designers to achieve a good design by determining the core dimension, volume of an OTSG for given flow rates and their entering and leaving temperatures as well as the heat transfer area on the smoke side. The developed model has been tested with reference to a scaled model of an existing OTSG that is installed at Manx Electricity Authority and the results were promising. The overall characteristics of heat transfer and pressure drop distributions of the OTSG “scaled model” shows general agreement with the real characteristics of the existing OTSG with error values less than 1%.