scholarly journals The operation of the last stage of steam turbine at low-flow rate modes

Energetika ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. L. Shubenko ◽  
V. N. Goloshchapov ◽  
D. O. Senetska

At the present time, thermal power plants and combined heat and power plants operate in highly manoeuvrable modes with almost daily deep unloading, shutdowns on weekends and holidays followed by launches from various thermal conditions. During start-ups, the operation at partial modes and shutdowns, the turbine flow path operates at low-flow rate modes and, as a result, varying tear-off phenomena appear — depending on a relative volumetric flow rate of steam Gv2 in the low-pressure cylinder starting from the last stage. This is especially true for the operation of the low-pressure path for cogeneration turbines. Under low-flow rate modes a change in the flow structure occurs accompanied by the appearance of the bushing tear-off, the rotating vortex in the gap between stator blades and rotor blades, and an increase in pressure in the main flow when switching to the operation at the compressor mode. The formation of the tear-off area is accompanied by a significant increase in the temperature of steam during its overheating due to ventilation losses created by vortex structures in the areas of tear-off. The temperature change along the working blade length is considered, the characteristic points of this change depending on the relative volumetric flow rate of steam are highlighted. The boundaries of transition from the wet steam to the su— perheated steam with decreasing Gv2 are determined. The power consumption for the operation of the stage with a decrease in the flow rate of steam and a change in the flow structure is considered.

Lab on a Chip ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 4372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Ou ◽  
John Jackson ◽  
Helen Burt ◽  
Mu Chiao

2021 ◽  
Vol 104 (2) ◽  
pp. 003685042199886
Author(s):  
Wenzhe Kang ◽  
Lingjiu Zhou ◽  
Dianhai Liu ◽  
Zhengwei Wang

Previous researches has shown that inlet backflow may occur in a centrifugal pump when running at low-flow-rate conditions and have nonnegligible effects on cavitation behaviors (e.g. mass flow gain factor) and cavitation stability (e.g. cavitation surge). To analyze the influences of backflow in impeller inlet, comparative studies of cavitating flows are carried out for two typical centrifugal pumps. A series of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were carried out for the cavitating flows in two pumps, based on the RANS (Reynolds-Averaged Naiver-Stokes) solver with the turbulence model of k- ω shear stress transport and homogeneous multiphase model. The cavity volume in Pump A (with less reversed flow in impeller inlet) decreases with the decreasing of flow rate, while the cavity volume in Pump B (with obvious inlet backflow) reach the minimum values at δ = 0.1285 and then increase as the flow rate decreases. For Pump A, the mass flow gain factors are negative and the absolute values increase with the decrease of cavitation number for all calculation conditions. For Pump B, the mass flow gain factors are negative for most conditions but positive for some conditions with low flow rate coefficients and low cavitation numbers, reaching the minimum value at condition of σ = 0.151 for most cases. The development of backflow in impeller inlet is found to be the essential reason for the great differences. For Pump B, the strong shearing between backflow and main flow lead to the cavitation in inlet tube. The cavity volume in the impeller decreases while that in the inlet tube increases with the decreasing of flow rate, which make the total cavity volume reaches the minimum value at δ = 0.1285 and then the mass flow gain factor become positive. Through the transient calculations for cavitating flows in two pumps, low-frequency fluctuations of pressure and flow rate are found in Pump B at some off-designed conditions (e.g. δ = 0.107, σ = 0.195). The relations among inlet pressure, inlet flow rate, cavity volume, and backflow are analyzed in detail to understand the periodic evolution of low-frequency fluctuations. Backflow is found to be the main reason which cause the positive value of mass flow gain factor at low-flow-rate conditions. Through the transient simulations of cavitating flow, backflow is considered as an important aspect closely related to the hydraulic stability of cavitating pumping system.


Author(s):  
Xuwen Qiu ◽  
David Japikse ◽  
Mark Anderson

Flow recirculation at the impeller inlet and outlet is an important feature that affects impeller performance, especially the power consumption at a very low flow rate. Although the mechanisms for this flow phenomenon have been studied, a practical model is needed for meanline modeling of impeller off-design performance. In this paper, a meanline recirculation model is proposed. At the inlet, the recirculation zone acts as area blockage to relieve the large incidence of the active flow at a low flow rate. The size of the blockage is estimated through a critical area ratio of an artificial “inlet diffuser” from the inlet to throat. The intensity of the reverse flow can then be calculated by assuming a linear velocity profile of meridional velocity in the recirculation zone. At the impeller outlet, a recirculation zone near the suction surface is established to balance the velocity difference on the pressure and suction sides of the blade. The size and the intensity of the outlet recirculation zone is assumed related to blade loading, which can be evaluated based on flow turning and Coriolis force. A few validation cases are presented showing a good comparison between test data and prediction by the model.


Author(s):  
Sasuga Ito ◽  
Masato Furukawa ◽  
Satoshi Gunjishima ◽  
Takafumi Ota ◽  
Kazuhito Konishi ◽  
...  

Abstract Inlet distortion has influence on the aerodynamic performance of turbomachinery such as compressors, turbines and fans. On turbochargers, bent pipes are installed around the compressor due to the spatial limitations in the engine room of the vehicle. As the result, the compressor is operated with the distorted inflow. In the low flow rate operation, the distorted inflow also affects the flow instability like stall and surge. Especially, the operation range on the low flow rate side is defined based on the flow rate where surge occurs, so it is important to investigate the effect of the distorted inflow on surge. In this study, the effect of the inlet distortion to surge phenomena has been investigated by the experiments with a transonic centrifugal compressor. A bent pipe has been installed at the upstream of the compressor to generate a distorted flow. Experiments have been also conducted under the condition that a straight pipe was installed upstream of the compressor, and unsteady measurements with high response pressure sensors and an I-type hot wire probe have been carried out to each experiments. In addition, Fast Fourier transform (FFT) and Wavelet transform have been applied to the unsteady measurement results obtained from each experiment.


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