The paper presents the results of the numerical analyses for the steam turbine rotor, dedicated for the newly-designed 900 MW steam unit with supercritical steam parameters (650 °C, 30.0 MPa). Basing on the design calculations, an optimal design solution was determined. Review of the available literature on materials for turbine rotors with supercritical steam parameters was done. Then the start-ups of the turbine were simulated. Thermal and strength states were analyzed. As a result, an optimal start-up characteristic was obtained.
Turbine stages can be divided into two types: impulse stages and reaction stages. The advantages of one type over the second one are generally known based on the basic physics of turbine stage. In this paper these differences between mentioned two types of turbines were indicated on the example of single stage turbines dedicated to work in organic Rankine cycle (ORC) power systems. The turbines for two ORC cases were analysed: the plant generating up to 30 kW and up to 300 kW of net electric power, respectively. Mentioned ORC systems operate with different working fluids: DMC (dimethyl carbonate) for the 30 kW power plant and MM (hexamethyldisiloxane) for the 300 kW power plant. The turbines were compared according to three major issues: thermodynamic and aerodynamic performance, mechanical and manufacturing aspects. The analysis was performed by means of the 0D turbomachinery theory and 3D computational aerodynamic calculations. As a result of this analysis, the paper indicates conclusions which type of turbine is a recommended choice to use in ORC systems taking into account the features of these systems.
Consumption of energy is one of the important indicators in developing countries, but a lot of companies from the energy sector have to cope with three key challenges, namely how to reduce their impact on the environment, how to ensure the low cost of the energy production and how to improve the system overall performance? For Polish energy market, the number of challenges is greater. The growing demand for electricity and contemporary development of nuclear power technology allow today’s design, implement new solutions for high energy conversion system low unit cost for energy and fuel production. In the present paper, numerical analysis of modular high-temperature nuclear reactor coupled with the steam cycle for electricity production has been presented. The analysed system consists of three independent cycles. The first two are high-temperature nuclear reactor cycles which are equipped with two high-temperature nuclear reactors, heat exchangers, blowers, steam generators. The third cycle is a Rankine cycle which is equipped with up to four steam turbines, that operate in the heat recovery system. The analysis of such a system shows that is possible to achieve significantly greater efficiency than offered by traditional nuclear reactor technology.
This paper presents the origins of marine steam turbine application on liquefied natural gas carriers. An analysis of alternative propulsion plant trends has been made. The more efficient ones with marine diesel engines gradually began to replace the less efficient plants. However, because of many advantages of the steam turbine, further development research is in progress in order to achieve comparable thermal efficiency. Research has been carried out in order to achieve higher thermal efficiency throughout increasing operational parameters of superheated steam before the turbine unit; improving its efficiency to bring it nearer to the ideal Carnot cycle by applying a reheating system of steam and multi stage regenerative boiler feed water heating. Furthermore, heat losses of the system are reduced by: improving the design of turbine blades, application of turbine casing and bearing cooling, as well as reduction in steam flow resistance in pipe work and maneuvering valves. The article identifies waste energy sources using the energy balance of a steam turbine propulsion plant applied on the liquefied natural gas carrier which was made out basing on results of a passive operation experiment, using the measured and calculated values from behavioral equations for the zero-dimensional model. Thermodynamic functions of state of waste heat fluxes have been identified in terms of their capability to be converted into usable energy fluxes. Thus, new ways of increasing the efficiency of energy conversion of a steam turbine propulsion plant have been addressed.
An important operational task for thermal turbines during run-up and run-down is to keep the stresses in the structural elements at a right level. This applies not only to their instantaneous values, but also to the impact of them on the engine lifetime. The turbine shaft is a particularly important element. The distribution of stresses depends on geometric characteristics of the shaft and its specific locations. This means a groove manufactured for fixing the rotor blades. The extreme stresses in this place occur during the start-up and the shaft heating to normal operating temperature. The process needs optimisation. Optimization tasks are multidisciplinary issues and can be carried out using different methods. In recent years, particular attention in optimisation has been paid to the use of artificial intelligence methods. Among them, a special role is assigned to genetic algorithms. The paper presents a genetic algorithm method to optimise the steam turbine shaft heating process during its start-up phase. The presented optimization task of this algorithm is to carry out the process of the shaft heating as soon as possible at the conditions of not exceeding the stresses at critical locations at any heating phase.
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