Steam Generation Plant
Managing steam quality
Steam drying
Steam is required for various purposes and typically generated in a boiler plant. When steam is taken into a steam turbine, steam may contain free liquids that would cause damage to the turbine blades.
In order to remove free liquids from steam flows, there are various ways to do it.
Steam drums
The most common separator is a steam drum which is located at the top of the boiler in which saturated steam is separated from the steam-water mixture leaving the boiler tubes. The mixture of steam and water enters in a drum either through a baffle-plate arrangement or through swirls or mini-cyclones. The steam is then dried by a fine-separator below the outlet nozzle.
MSR – Moisture Separator Reheater
The MSR is a highly complex component in a nuclear powerplant and located in between the High- and low-pressure steam turbine. The moisture separator removes steam condensate that results from the expansion of steam in the high pressure section of the steam turbine. The steam quality leaving the MS-section has a direct impact on the energy consumption in the reheater, thus highly efficient vane type separators are required.
Complex internals arrangements in steam generators
In the top section of a steam generator typically 4-bank arrangements with perforated plates are utilized. These arrangements are typically subject of CFD analysis due to the complex nature of the flow patterns.
Inline separators
When it is not possible to separator the free liquids from the steam inside components, there is the possibility to locate this task outside into a separate stand-alone liquid-gas separator.
