Diagnosis of a Sequential Combustion Industrial Gas Turbine

MSc Final Assignment

As electricity demand from individual power plants is expected to fluctuate increasingly due to the growing share of renewables such as wind derived energy, operators of large Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power plants will have to deal with increasing load variations and rapid load changes. To keep up reliability and availability of the plants, it is useful to accurately keep track of plant performance by comparing actual cycle data with a base case model. This MSc thesis project is part of a research project forElectrabel NL, aiming at increasing the flexibility and reliability of the Maxima power plant, an ALSTOM GTCC plant recently built inLelystad, The Netherlands, for Electrabel. At the heart of the plant is the GT26, a sequential combustion gas turbine delivering 290 MW shaft power at base load.
The plant has been in commercial operation for about a year and has undergone two maintenance jobs, the so-called A- and B-inspection. The aim of this MSc project is to point out changes in gas turbine performance due to: 1) the major B-inspection and 2) degradation as a result of almost continuous operation during a year. For this purpose, the student shall compare the state of the machine at minimally 3 points in time, namely right after 1st commissioning in October 2010, right before major B-inspection and right after B-inspection. The tool used to assess the state of the machine is GSP, a component based performance modeling software tool. A base case model of the GT26 has already been developed and is at the students disposal. All information gathered during the project shall be treated with strict confidentiality, so a confidentiality agreement should be signed by the student.
 

The student shall perform the following tasks:
    -   Literature research
    -   Survey of all measurements used to assess the state; study of existing GT26 model (in GSP) and Excel
        calculation sheets
    -   Extensive sensitivity analysis of existing model
    -   Study measurements of state right after commissioning in 2010, and right before and after B-inspection
    -   Diagnosis: use of GSP (including diagnostic tool) to point out mutations in machine performance
    -   Statistical analysis: study influence of measurement uncertainty on the results of diagnosis
    -   Use of alternative performance modeling software GasTurb for ‘second opinion’
    -   Investigation of other research questions posed by the operations/process department of the Maxima plant
        (tentative)
    -   Write report

Supervisors:
Ir. Sowande Boksteen,  PhD student,  Electrabel/TUDelft                                                                                          

Dr. Rene Pecnik, Assistant professor  TUDelft
                                              
Prof. ir. Jos van Buijtenen, Professor TUDelft, Manager, Electrabel

Bart Schat, Maxima Plant Operations

Literature:
[1] Gas Turbine Performance P.P. Walsh, P. Fletcher       Second Edition 2004
[2] GSP, a generic object-oriented gas turbine simulation environment      Wilfried P.J. Visser, Michael J.
    Broomhead        Proceedings of the ASME TURBO EXPO 2000 Munich, Germany
[3] Experience with GSP as a gas path analysis tool       W.P.J. Visser, M. Oostveen, H. Pieters, E. van Dorp
             Proceedings of the ASME TURBO EXPO 2006
[4] MODEL BASED GAS TURBINE PARAMETER CORRECTIONS                          Joachim Kurzke Proceedings of the
    ASME TURBO EXPO 2003
[5] The reheat concept: the proven pathway to ultra-low emissions and high efficiency and flexibility Felix
    Güthe, Jaan Hellat, Peter Flohr     Proceedings of ASME Turbo Expo 2007

Chair:
Energy Technology