Remote Thermal Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics: Turning Data Into Knowledge

Gas turbine simple or combined cycle plants are built and operated with higher availability, reliability, and performance in order to provide the customer with sufficient operating revenues and reduced fuel costs meanwhile enhancing customer dispatch competitiveness. A tremendous amount of operational data is usually collected from the everyday operation of a power plant. It has become an increasingly important but challenging issue about how to turn this data into knowledge and further solutions via developing advanced state-of-the-art analytics. This paper presents an integrated system and methodology to pursue this purpose by automating multi-level, multi-paradigm, multi-facet performance monitoring and anomaly detection for heavy duty gas turbines. The system provides an intelligent platform to drive site-specific performance improvements, mitigate outage risk, rationalize operational pattern, and enhance maintenance schedule and service offerings via taking appropriate proactive actions. In addition, the paper also presents the components in the system, including data sensing, hardware, and operational anomaly detection, expertise proactive act of company, site specific degradation assessment, and water wash effectiveness monitoring and analytics. As demonstrated in two examples, this remote performance monitoring aims to improve equipment efficiency by converting data into knowledge and solutions in order to drive value for customers including lowering operating fuel cost and increasing customer power sales and life cycle value.

Investigation of Fluid Dynamic Properties of Liquid Field’s Metal

The density and viscosity Field’s metal is measured in this work and compared to traditional liquid metal coolants such as sodium and lead-bismuth eutectic. Field’s metal is a eutectic of the ternary In-Bi-Sn system. The alloy is by weight percent is 51% indium, 32.5% bismuth and 16.5% tin and possesses a melting temperature of 333 K. This work experimentally measures the density and viscosity of Field’s metal for numerical modeling and thermal hydraulic applications. The density of Field’s metal is measured using a pycnometer. The density is determined for both its solid and liquid states. In its liquid state Field’s metal is found to have a linear dependence with respect to increasing temperature. The viscosity of Field’s metal is measured using a rotational viscometer. The viscosity is measured is to be 27 mPa-s at 353 K, however further investigation is required to determine a trend at higher temperatures.

Analysis of High-Speed Electrical Generators for Utility Applications

High-speed alternators are believed to be well developed nowadays, following the improvement in performance and decrease of costs for electronic power converters and permanent magnet materials. Their compact design and their ability to vary the rotational speed in off-design conditions promise superior performance when compared to conventional generators. High-speed alternators are only available in limited sizes for small-scale applications, whereas improvements in efficiency and optimized part-load behavior are particularly important especially for small-scale electricity generation. Enhanced energy utilization for electricity production by small utility plants or by distributed units located at private homes or commercial buildings, based on thermodynamic cycles powered by natural gas or various renewable energy sources, is possible to be achieved through a wider application of grid-integrated high-speed technology. This study presents a critical review of previous research and demonstration work on high-speed electrical machines and a summary of the technical challenges limiting their performance and their expansion into larger sizes. Conclusions are drawn for finding appropriate solutions for practical high-speed electricity generation units and their readiness for a much wider deployment. Closer analysis is attempted on the thermal and mechanical integrity of high-speed alternators and the technical challenges that slow down their scale-up to MW-size units for utility applications. The necessary research and development work that needs to be done in the near future is outlined and discussed herein.

Comparative Analysis of Conventional and Fuel Cell-Based Gas Turbine Power Plants

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a complete comparative, energy and 2nd low analyses between different types of fuel cells integrated with a gas turbine power plant. Different levels of modeling for the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) and the integrated systems are to be presented. The overall system performance is analyzed by employing individual models and further applying energy and exergetic analyses for different configurations of gas turbine power cycles. The study includes applying different proposed methods and techniques to enhance the overall efficiency of the integrated cycle. After performing the complete technical management of the complete system, a comparative study between conventional and PEMFC and SOFC cycles is investigated to highlight the corresponding advantages and disadvantages of each system. The following systems are tested and evaluated: (a) Conventional Gas Turbine System with a combustion Chamber (b) Integrated SOFC Stack into a Gas Turbine System (c) The Proposed Integrated System with both SOFC and PEMFC.

Analysis and Modification of the Design of Fluid Power Control System for the Improvement of Product Quality

This research investigation is focused on providing system performance under different operating conditions, with special focus on variations in the supply pressure. The investigations have been carried out for different system designs. The analysis of the results introduces the effect of system designs on its static and dynamic performance. Also, the investigations provide the effect of variations of system operating conditions and load value. A hydraulic system has been designed with variable velocity, pressure and load. The detailed examination has been carried out on a system that consists of a hydraulic power supply unit, control valves (pressure control valve, flow control valve, throttle valve and directional control valve). We have investigated the effect of adding a flow control valve (FCV) in the chosen circuit and also replacing the FCV with a proportional flow control valve (PFCV). In order to study the effect of this valve on system performance we examine the role of change of operating conditions and loading values on the system performance. Thus the displacement and speed of the piston of the hydraulic cylinder has been experimented under different values of supply pressure, flow rate, and load. We make this investigation to develop the performance evaluation by replacing the (FCV) by proportional flow control valve (PFCV) via position control so that one can achieve the static and dynamic performance of the system more accurate. Apparent improvement in flow rate ranges from 8% to 29.5% and dynamic response from 30 to 64%. The results reveal that this methodology allows one to achieve high quality of the product.

Applications and Benefits of RAM

This is a follow up article from last year’s ICONE/POWER Conference in Anaheim discussing the development of the new standard for ASME Codes and Standards Committee for the Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM) of Power Plants. The standard focuses on the priorities of safety, production, and efficiency, with the objective to create an availability program. This program defines an operating budget that supports an effective maintenance program, which in turn ensures the life span of the reliable equipment. The intent is to establish an industry recognized standard for RAM. Some general concepts of the new standard are presented here.

Design and Evaluation of a Rooftop Wind Turbine Rotor With Untwisted Blades

A small horizontal axis wind turbine rotor was designed and tested with aerodynamically efficient, economical and easy to manufacture blades. Basic blade aerodynamic analysis was conducted using commercially available software. The blade span was constrained such that the complete wind turbine can be rooftop mountable with the envisioned wind turbine height of around 8 m. The blade was designed without any taper or twist to comply with the low cost and ease of manufacturing requirements. The aerodynamic analysis suggested laminar flow airfoils to be the most efficient airfoils for such use. Using NACA 63-418 airfoil, a rectangular blade geometry was selected with chord length of 0.27[m] and span of 1.52[m]. Glass reinforced plastic was used as the blade material for low cost and favorable strength to weight ratio with a skin thickness of 1[mm]. Because of the resultant velocity changes with respect to the blade span, while the blade is rotating, an optimal installed angle of attack was to be determined. The installed angle of attack was required to produce the highest possible rotation under usual wind speeds while start at relatively low speed. Tests were conducted at multiple wind speeds with blades mounted on free rotating shaft. The turbine was tested for three different installed angles and rotational speeds were recorded. The result showed increase in rotational speed with the increase in blade angle away from the free-stream velocity direction while the start-up speeds were found to be within close range of each other. At the optimal angle was found to be 22° from the plane of rotation. The results seem very promising for a low cost small wind turbine with no twist and taper in the blade. The tests established that non-twisted wind turbine blades, when used for rooftop small wind turbines, can generate useable electrical power for domestic consumption. It also established that, for small wind turbines, non-twisted, non-tapered blades provide an economical yet productive alternative to the existing complex wind turbine blades.

Adaptive Control of Hybrid Ultracapacitor-Battery Storage System for PV Output Smoothing

The integration of hybrid energy storage system (ESS) with PV has been considered an effective solution for PV power smoothing, e.g. the hybrid Ultracapacitor (UC)-Battery storage system. This paper proposes a fuzzy-logic-based adaptive power management system for smoothing PV power output, which manages the power sharing between the UC and Battery system. In this method, the real-time system dynamics are reflected in the adaptive control parameter settings. At the same time this method effectively considers the characteristics and operational constraints of the energy storage devices, e.g. SOC limit, charge/discharge current limit, etc., in order to sustain the system operation. A hybrid PV/UC/Battery power system is modeled by Matlab/Simulink. The simulation studies are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed control method in PV fluctuation suppression, sustainable system operation, energy storage performance.

Research on Wind Turbine Blade Surface Damage Fault On-Line Monitoring and Diagnosis System

The basic fault types of wind turbine blades are introduced, a novel blade surface damage detection method based on machine vision is being suggested. The network of wind turbine blade surface damage fault on-line monitoring and fault diagnosis system has already been developed. The system architecture, software modules and functions are described, and given application example illustrates the usefulness and effectiveness of this system. The result shows that this system can monitor the surface damage failure of the blade in real time, and can effectively reduce the blade’s maintenance costs for wind farms, especially offshore wind farm.

Study on the Reliability Improvement of a Mechanical Seal for the Primary Loop Recirculation Pumps (PLR Pump)

Primary Loop Recirculation pump (PLR pump) for Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) uses a mechanical seal as a shaft seal device, which the seal material is made of a ceramic. Recently, a new ceramic suitable as a seal material has been developed. We will explain about the introduction of the material to a mechanical seal for the PLR pump. First, we checked the material characteristics of the ceramic. Next, we carried out the abrasion acceleration test at the mechanical seal test facility for PLR pump, and performed an analysis of seal face deformation for the applied ceramic. Then, we performed a full scale test that simulated the operation pattern of the PLR pump. As a result, we confirmed that the new ceramic property suits for the use as a mechanical seal for the PLR pump.