DYNA JOURNAL ENGINEERING

Key words:

entradas de aire, presión de descarga de turbina, oxígeno disuelto, consumo específico, air in-leakage, turbine back pressure, dissolved oxygen, heat rate..

Article type:

ARTICULO DE INVESTIGACION / RESEARCH ARTICLE

Section:

RESEARCH ARTICLES

ABSTRACT
Power plants need to reduce operating costs to be competitive, by eliminating correctable causes of wasted energy and minimizing lost revenue due to forced outages. The main cause of these problems is the excessive air in-leakage in condensers. High air-leakage causes turbine back pressure to rise, dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration to increase and the plant heat rate (CE) to deteriorate to higher values. The development of methods to detect air in-leakage has involved from the methods based of foam, smoke and various audio methods, but it generated high levels of uncertainty. The method discussed in this study is the trace gas method, using helium (He), which has been tested in a power plant of 550 MW, with good results.
KEYWORDS: air in-leakage, turbine back pressure, dissolved oxygen, heat rate.