Validation of Advanced Steam Turbine Technology: A Case Study of an Ultra Super Critical Steam Turbine Power Plant

Author(s):  
Rainer Quinkertz ◽  
Thomas Thiemann ◽  
Kai Gierse

High efficiency and flexible operation continue to be the major requirements for power generation because of the benefits of reduced emissions and reduced fuel consumption, i.e. reduced operating costs. Ultra super critical (USC) steam parameters are the basis for state of the art technology of coal fired power plants with highest efficiency. An important part of the development process for advanced steam turbines is product validation. This step involves more than just providing evidence of customer guaranteed values (e.g. heat rate or electric output). It also involves proving that the design targets have been achieved and that the operational experience is fed back to designers to further develop the design criteria and enable the next step in the development of highly sophisticated products. What makes product validation for large size power plant steam turbines especially challenging is the fact that, due to the high costs of the required infrastructure, steam turbine manufacturers usually do not have a full scope / full scale testing facility. Therefore, good customer relations are the key to successful validation. This paper describes an extensive validation program for a modern state of the art ultra supercritical steam turbine performed at an operating 1000 MW steam power plant in China. Several measuring points in addition to the standard operating measurements were installed at one of the high pressure turbines to record the temperature distribution, e.g. to verify the functionality of the internal cooling system, which is an advanced design feature of the installed modern high pressure steam turbines. Predicted 3D temperature distributions are compared to the actual measurements in order to verify and evaluate the design rules and the design philosophy applied. Conclusions are drawn regarding the performance of modern 3D design tools applied in the current design process and an outlook is given on the future potential of modern USC turbines.

Author(s):  
Joseph A. Cotroneo ◽  
Tara A. Cole ◽  
Douglas C. Hofer

The aerodynamic design and prototype performance testing of a new line of high efficiency, high pressure (HP), 50% reaction steam turbines is described in some detail. Three designs were carried out that can be used in a repeating stage fashion to form high efficiency steam paths. The designs were performed employing a blade master concept. The masters can be aerodynamically scaled and cut to cover a wide range of applications while maintaining vector diagram integrity. Three equivalent prototype flow paths, one each for Gen 0, 1 and 2, masters were designed and tested in a Steam Turbine Test Vehicle (STTV). These prototype designs are representative of high pressure steam turbines for combined cycle power plants. Design of experiments is used to optimize the flow path, stage counts and diameters for production designs taking into account multidisciplinary design constraints. Four such Gen 1 steam path designs have been executed to date as part of a structured series of combined cycle power plants. [1-5] There are two A14 HEAT* (High Efficiency Advanced Technology) steam turbine HP flow paths for GE’s 107FA combined cycle power plants and two A15 HEAT HP flow paths for the 109FB. The larger of the A14 HEAT steam turbine HP’s has recently been performance tested at a customer site demonstrating world class efficiency levels of over 90% for this low volume flow combined cycle turbine [1]. HP volume flows are likely to drop even lower in the future with the need to go to higher steam inlet pressure for combined cycle efficiency improvements so steam path designs with high efficiency at low volume flow will be increasingly important.


Author(s):  
Paul Hurd ◽  
Frank Truckenmueller ◽  
Norbert Thamm ◽  
Helmut Pollak ◽  
Matthias Neef ◽  
...  

Modern steam turbines of the author’s company are based on advanced technology such as high efficiency seals, 3D blading, single inner cylinders, and advanced materials. These technologies result in a compact opposed-flow HP/IP combined cylinder design with high long-term efficiency, reliability, and availability. This paper will illustrate the features, benefits, and operational experience of large steam turbines with advanced technologies using an opposed-flow HP/IP cylinder. The paper will also address the relative performance of this type of steam turbine against its predecessors. Specific examples will be examined: 350 MW fossil units in the Asian market, a typical 250 MW combined cycle steam turbine in the American market, a 700 MW three-cylinder class design for conventional steam plants developed for the global coal market, and a 600 MW steam turbine upgrade.


Author(s):  
Y. Kostenko ◽  
D. Veltmann ◽  
S. Hecker

Abstract Growing renewable energy generation share causes more irregular and more flexible operational regimes of conventional power plants than in the past. It leads to long periods without dispatch for several days or even weeks. As a consequence, the required pre-heating of the steam turbine leads to an extended power plant start-up time [1]. The current steam turbine Hot Standby Mode (HSM) contributes to a more flexible steam turbine operation and is a part of the Flex-Power Services™ portfolio [2]. HSM prevents the turbine components from cooling via heat supply using an electrical Trace Heating System (THS) after shutdowns [3]. The aim of the HSM is to enable faster start-up time after moderate standstills. HSM functionality can be extended to include the pre-heating option after longer standstills. This paper investigates pre-heating of the steam turbine with an electrical THS. At the beginning, it covers general aspects of flexible fossil power plant operation and point out the advantages of HSM. Afterwards the technology of the trace heating system and its application on steam turbines will be explained. In the next step the transient pre-heating process is analyzed and optimized using FEA, CFD and analytic calculations including validation considerations. Therefor a heat transfer correlation for flexible transient operation of the HSM was developed. A typical large steam turbine with an output of up to 300MW was investigated. Finally the results are summarized and an outlook is given. The results of heat transfer and conduction between and within turbine components are used to enable fast start-ups after long standstills or even outages with the benefit of minimal energy consumption. The solution is available for new apparatus as well as for the modernization of existing installations.


Author(s):  
Victor A. Shevtchenko ◽  
Werner Franke ◽  
Peter Gummel ◽  
Marian Kotrus ◽  
George von Wedel

JSC Donbassenergo, a major utility in the Ukraine, is operating power plants of approx. 3500 MW, mostly operated with their local fuel anthracite. As the existing facilities are reaching their age a strategy has been developed to apply state-of-the-art technology for revamping. On this basis the decision has been taken to replace boiler No. 4 of the Starobeshevo Power Plant with a boiler based on CFB technology. The unit is designed for 670 t/h of superheated and 538 t/h of reheated steam with 545 / 543 °C and 13.2 / 2.5 MPa temperature and pressure to account for the existing steam turbine which generates 200 MW electricity. Fuels used are a local anthracite and anthracite sludge left from coal washing and which is available in large quantities. Emissions are designed in accordance with European regulations allowing 200 mg/m3 (STP) for NOX and 200 mg/m3 (STP) for SO2. A basic description of the overall plant will be given. Details on the design of the CFB boiler which is equipped with Lurgi’s patented pant-leg and other design issues will be explained. Operating results from the commissioning and first commercial operation will be presented.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2B) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanderley Vasconcelos ◽  
Wellington Antonio Soares ◽  
Raissa Oliveira Marques ◽  
Silvério Ferreira Silva Jr ◽  
Amanda Laureano Raso

Non-destructive inspection (NDI) is one of the key elements in ensuring quality of engineering systems and their safe use. This inspection is a very complex task, during which the inspectors have to rely on their sensory, perceptual, cognitive, and motor skills. It requires high vigilance once it is often carried out on large components, over a long period of time, and in hostile environments and restriction of workplace. A successful NDI requires careful planning, choice of appropriate NDI methods and inspection procedures, as well as qualified and trained inspection personnel. A failure of NDI to detect critical defects in safety-related components of nuclear power plants, for instance, may lead to catastrophic consequences for workers, public and environment. Therefore, ensuring that NDI is reliable and capable of detecting all critical defects is of utmost importance. Despite increased use of automation in NDI, human inspectors, and thus human factors, still play an important role in NDI reliability. Human reliability is the probability of humans conducting specific tasks with satisfactory performance. Many techniques are suitable for modeling and analyzing human reliability in NDI of nuclear power plant components, such as FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) and THERP (Technique for Human Error Rate Prediction). An example by using qualitative and quantitative assessesments with these two techniques to improve typical NDI of pipe segments of a core cooling system of a nuclear power plant, through acting on human factors issues, is presented.


Author(s):  
Yifan Wu ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
Deren Sheng ◽  
Jianhong Chen ◽  
Zitao Yu

Clean energy is now developing rapidly, especially in the United States, China, the Britain and the European Union. To ensure the stability of power production and consumption, and to give higher priority to clean energy, it is essential for large power plants to implement peak shaving operation, which means that even the 1000 MW steam turbines in large plants will undertake peak shaving tasks for a long period of time. However, with the peak load regulation, the steam turbines operating in low capacity may be much more likely to cause faults. In this paper, aiming at peak load shaving, a fault diagnosis method of steam turbine vibration has been presented. The major models, namely hierarchy-KNN model on the basis of improved principal component analysis (Improved PCA-HKNN) has been discussed in detail. Additionally, a new fault diagnosis method has been proposed. By applying the PCA improved by information entropy, the vibration and thermal original data are decomposed and classified into a finite number of characteristic parameters and factor matrices. For the peak shaving power plants, the peak load shaving state involving their methods of operation and results of vibration would be elaborated further. Combined with the data and the operation state, the HKNN model is established to carry out the fault diagnosis. Finally, the efficiency and reliability of the improved PCA-HKNN model is discussed. It’s indicated that compared with the traditional method, especially handling the large data, this model enhances the convergence speed and the anti-interference ability of the neural network, reduces the training time and diagnosis time by more than 50%, improving the reliability of the diagnosis from 76% to 97%.


Author(s):  
Juri Bellucci ◽  
Federica Sazzini ◽  
Filippo Rubechini ◽  
Andrea Arnone ◽  
Lorenzo Arcangeli ◽  
...  

This paper focuses on the use of the CFD for improving a steam turbine preliminary design tool. Three-dimensional RANS analyses were carried out in order to independently investigate the effects of profile, secondary flow and tip clearance losses, on the efficiency of two high-pressure steam turbine stages. The parametric study included geometrical features such as stagger angle, aspect ratio and radius ratio, and was conducted for a wide range of flow coefficients to cover the whole operating envelope. The results are reported in terms of stage performance curves, enthalpy loss coefficients and span-wise distribution of the blade-to-blade exit angles. A detailed discussion of these results is provided in order to highlight the different aerodynamic behavior of the two geometries. Once the analysis was concluded, the tuning of a preliminary steam turbine design tool was carried out, based on a correlative approach. Due to the lack of a large set of experimental data, the information obtained from the post-processing of the CFD computations were applied to update the current correlations, in order to improve the accuracy of the efficiency evaluation for both stages. Finally, the predictions of the tuned preliminary design tool were compared with the results of the CFD computations, in terms of stage efficiency, in a broad range of flow coefficients and in different real machine layouts.


Author(s):  
Andreas Pickard

At the start of this new century, environmental regulations and free-market economics are becoming the key drivers for the electricity generating industry. Advances in Gas Turbine (GT) technology, allied with integration and refinement of Heat Recovery Steam Generators (HRSG) and Steam Turbine (ST) plant, have made Combined Cycle installations the most efficient of the new power station types. This potential can also be realized, to equal effect, by adding GT’s and HRSG’s to existing conventional steam power plants in a so-called ‘repowering’ process. This paper presents the economical and environmental considerations of retrofitting the steam turbine within repowering schemes. Changing the thermal cycle parameters of the plant, for example by deletion of the feed heating steambleeds or by modified live and reheat steam conditions to suit the combined cycle process, can result in off-design operation of the existing steam turbine. Retrofitting the steam turbine to match the combined cycle unit can significantly increase the overall cycle efficiency compared to repowering without the ST upgrade. The paper illustrates that repowering, including ST retrofitting, when considered as a whole at the project planning stage, has the potential for greater gain by allowing proper plant optimization. Much of the repowering in the past has been carried out without due regard to the benefits of re-matching the steam turbine. Retrospective ST upgrade of such cases can still give benefit to the plant owner, especially when it is realized that most repowering to date has retained an unmodified steam turbine (that first went into operation some decades before). The old equipment will have suffered deterioration due to aging and the steam path will be to an archaic design of poor efficiency. Retrofitting older generation plant with modern leading-edge steam-path technology has the potential for realizing those substantial advances made over the last 20 to 30 years. Some examples, given in the paper, of successfully retrofitted steam turbines applied in repowered plants will show, by specific solution, the optimization of the economics and benefit to the environment of the converted plant as a whole.


Author(s):  
Kevin Cremanns ◽  
Dirk Roos ◽  
Simon Hecker ◽  
Peter Dumstorff ◽  
Henning Almstedt ◽  
...  

The demand for energy is increasingly covered through renewable energy sources. As a consequence, conventional power plants need to respond to power fluctuations in the grid much more frequently than in the past. Additionally, steam turbine components are expected to deal with high loads due to this new kind of energy management. Changes in steam temperature caused by rapid load changes or fast starts lead to high levels of thermal stress in the turbine components. Therefore, todays energy market requires highly efficient power plants which can be operated under flexible conditions. In order to meet the current and future market requirements, turbine components are optimized with respect to multi-dimensional target functions. The development of steam turbine components is a complex process involving different engineering disciplines and time-consuming calculations. Currently, optimization is used most frequently for subtasks within the individual discipline. For a holistic approach, highly efficient calculation methods, which are able to deal with high dimensional and multidisciplinary systems, are needed. One approach to solve this problem is the usage of surrogate models using mathematical methods e.g. polynomial regression or the more sophisticated Kriging. With proper training, these methods can deliver results which are nearly as accurate as the full model calculations themselves in a fraction of time. Surrogate models have to face different requirements: the underlying outputs can be, for example, highly non-linear, noisy or discontinuous. In addition, the surrogate models need to be constructed out of a large number of variables, where often only a few parameters are important. In order to achieve good prognosis quality only the most important parameters should be used to create the surrogate models. Unimportant parameters do not improve the prognosis quality but generate additional noise to the approximation result. Another challenge is to achieve good results with as little design information as possible. This is important because in practice the necessary information is usually only obtained by very time-consuming simulations. This paper presents an efficient optimization procedure using a self-developed hybrid surrogate model consisting of moving least squares and anisotropic Kriging. With its maximized prognosis quality, it is capable of handling the challenges mentioned above. This enables time-efficient optimization. Additionally, a preceding sensitivity analysis identifies the most important parameters regarding the objectives. This leads to a fast convergence of the optimization and a more accurate surrogate model. An example of this method is shown for the optimization of a labyrinth shaft seal used in steam turbines. Within the optimization the opposed objectives of minimizing leakage mass flow and decreasing total enthalpy increase due to friction are considered.


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