A study of the coarse droplet formation from the liquid film in steam turbines

Abstract

The steam turbines are still the essential machines for the energy transformation. For all the deployment of the non-fossil energy sources the steam turbine remains the most important energy transforming device. In the current situation when the daily operation of the turbines is not predictable due to electricity supply from the photovoltaic and the wind power plants, the turbines work in the non-design conditions, the danger of the blade’s erosion caused by the coarse droplets is assumed. The purpose of this paper is to suggest the possible formation process of the coarse droplets in the steam turbine. The current studies were focused mostly on the measurement or identification of the coarse droplets in the steam turbine but the explanation of the archived results was not sufficient. The influence of the flow field behind the blade on the liquid film atomization was studied. The first measurements of the detailed characteristic of the flow field in the wind tunnel for the qualitative analysis of the phenomena were performed with promising results.