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Fossil fuel-fired (central) power plants use either steam or combustion turbines to provide the mechanical power to electrical generators. Pressurized high temperature steam or gas expands through various stages of a turbine, transferring energy to the rotating turbine blades. The turbine is mechanically coupled to a generator, which produces electricity.
Steam turbine plants generally have a history of achieving up to 95% availability and can operate for more than a year between shutdowns for maintenance and inspections. Their unplanned or forced outage rates are typically less than 2% or less than one week per year. Modern large steam turbine plants (over 500 MW) have efficiencies approaching 40-45%. These plants have installed costs between $800 and$2000/kW, depending on environmental permitting requirements.
Combustion (natural gas) turbine development increased in the 1930s as a means of jet aircraft propulsion. In the early 1980s, the efficiency and reliability of gas turbines had progressed sufficiently to be widely adopted for stationary power applications. Gas turbines range in size from 30 kW (microturbines) to 250 MW (industrial frames). Industrial gas turbines have efficiencies approaching 40% and 60% for simple and combined cycles respectively.
The gas turbine share of the world power generation market has climbed from 20 % to 40 % of capacity additions over the past 20 years with this technology seeing increased use for base load power generation. Much of this growth can be accredited to large (>500 MW) combined cycle power plants that exhibit low capital cost (less than $550/kW) and high thermal efficiency. The capital cost of a gas turbine power plant can vary between $35000-$950/kW with the lower end applying to large industrial frame turbines in combined cycle configurations. Availability of natural gasfired plants can exceed 95%. In Canada, there are 28 natural gas-fired combined cycle and cogeneration plants with an average efficiency of 48 %. The average power output for each plant was 236 MW with an installed cost of around $ 500/kW.
In a gas turbine, large volumes of air are compressed to high pressure in a multistage compressor for distribution to one or more combustion gases from the combustion chambers power an axial turbine that drives the compressor and the generator before exhausting to atmosphere. In this way, the combustion gases in a gas turbine power the turbine directly, rather than requiring heat transfer to a water/steam cycle to power a steam turbine, as in the steam plant. The latest gas turbine designs use turbine inlet temperatures of 1,500C (2,730F) and compression ratios as high as 30:1 (for aeroderivatives) giving thermal efficiencies of 35 percent or more for a simple-cycle gas turbine.