Industrial Steam Turbines Improve Energy Utilization In Thermal Power Plants

Abstract

Owing to high fuel costs, European Companies have always had to use special care in planning their process-energy requirements. Therefore, the industrial steam turbine has also played a major part in this respect. The constant quest for improved fuel-economy and the development of new processes involving the use of turbines brought with them a great variety of heat-cycle arrangements, resulting in a considerable increase in the scope of design parameters. In the fifties, it had become possible to build turbines individually matched to each particular process. But in the face of increased demand for turbines, the high cost of designing and building such machines, as well as the greater risk involved, no longer justified this practice. This led in the sixties to the development of standardized turbines comprising several series of basic types. The type coming closest to the operating conditions encountered was normally selected for a given application. The growing number of requirements imposed on steam turbines, and increasingly higher steam conditions, led to the development in the late sixties of a modular system of industrial steam turbines having the same reliable performance as a standard-type turbine. Examples are presented to show how the most economical turbine can be composed from a building-block system. Design features allowing highly reliable performance of the turbine despite nearly individual adaptation to process requirements at maximum design parameters are also discussed.