Numerical Analysis of Aerodynamic Characteristics of Exhaust Passage with Consideration of Wet Steam Effect in a Supercritical Steam Turbine

• Main Authors: Qing Xu, Aqiang Lin, Yuhang Cai, Naseem Ahmad, Yu Duan, Chen Liu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-03-01
• Series: Energies
• Subjects: steam turbine; multi-phase flow; wet steam; last stage blades; extraction pipeline
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/7/1560

To investigate the aerodynamic performance of exhaust passage under multi-phase flow, an actual case is conducted in the low-pressure double exhaust passages of 600 MW steam turbine. Then, the flow field is compared and analyzed with and without the built-in extraction pipelines based on the Eulerian–Eulerian homogenous medium multiphase method. Results show that the upstream swirling flow and downstream mixed swirling flow are the main causes to induce the entropy-increase in the exhaust passage. Moreover, the flow loss and static-pressure recovery ability in the exhaust hood are greater than those in the condenser neck. Compared with the flow field without the steam extraction pipelines, the entropy-increase increases, the static pressure recovery coefficient decreases, and the spontaneous condensation rates of wet steam decrease in the downstream area of the pipelines. With the increase of steam turbine loads, an increment in entropy-increase in the exhaust passage is 0.98 J/(kg·K) lower than that without steam extraction pipelines. Moreover, the incrementing range of uniformity coefficient is increased from 14.5% to 40.9% at the condenser neck outlet. It can be concluded that the built-in exhaustion pipeline can improve the aerodynamic performance of exhaust passage and better reflect the real state of the flow field. These research results can serve as a reference for turbine passage design.