Phil Engel

Engineering 224 Thermodynamics

Analysis Problem 3

Kinetic Energy Change in a Steam Turbine:

Most of the energy that is pulled from the steam to produce work by the turbine comes from a
large pressure change and enthalpy change while change in kinetic energy remains relatively low. When
flowing steam passes through a steam turbine, it goes through a series of rotors and fixed position
stators converting the total mass flow energy of the steam from high kinetic energy and enthalpy energy
into high rotational work output. The rotors draw the kinetic energy from the steam flow to be
transferred into work energy, then afterwards, the now slower steam passes through stator blades
which increase the kinetic energy back to almost the same level using a ratio of cross sectional areas and
its distinct aerodynamic shape. Raising the kinetic energy back up to original levels draws the energy the
large enthalpy change of the steam, thus when the steam exits, it is at a much lower temperature and
pressure but still manages to exit at a large speed.

Turbine Inlet/Outlet Areas:

When designing a turbine, in order to get the maximum work from the rotor blades, you want to
have a large area outlet and a small area inlet. A large area outlet with large rotors will provide good
leverage of the blades since this is where your steam velocity will be the lowest. A small inlet size
proportional to your outlet size on a square root scale would mean that as your velocity is decreasing
(and kinetic energy decreases with a quadratic velocity decay) you would get an equal amount of work

energy transferred from all ends of the turbine from the inlet to the outlet at the other end of the
turbine.

Heat Loss:
Heat loss in a steam turbine cycle has a 1:1 relationship with the amount of power loss from
which the shaft that is able to produce. Once the low-pressure steam flows out of the end of the
turbine, it needs to be cooled and converted to a compressed liquid using a pump in order to be repressurized, then boiled, and to repeat again in the engine cycle. Before re-pressurizing is where the
heat rejection takes place. This correlation can be noted in Figure 2 on our graphical analysis using
MATLAB. Looking at Figure 2, you can observe that the more heat loss you have in your system (which
means the more exit steam you have to convert in to saturated liquid to recycle the process), the less
work your turbine will net. We looked at the effects of the work output rejecting 0 kW of heat to 400kW
of heat in increments of 100 kW and it resulted in less work being outputted by the turbine from 0 kW
to 400 kW less power.
The derived equation for work output by a steam turbine follows here:

, = ( +

2
2

) ( +
) ()
2
2

Pressure and Quality Difference:

When looking at outlet pressure, most of the power output loss came in to play when your reduced
pressure was more than roughly 50 kPa. If you could keep your outlet pressures less than 50 kPa, you
could achieve about 50% more power generation (or about 750kW) compared to if you had an outlet
pressure greater than 50 kPa. This is due to steam not having as much enthalpy or internal energy at
lower pressures.
The exit quality of the steam has a great effect on power output. From Figure 1, when there is less
steam outlet quality (or more fluid percentage), you acquire a greater power output of the turbine. This
is because the turbine reduces the pressure and temperature of the steam from drawing it from the
enthalpy of the steam. If the quality of the steam gets reduced to to 88%, your power generation
increases by almost 10% or 4000 kW as opposed to having the steam remain as a vapor at 100% quality.
However, problems arise when you lower steam quality such as increased potential for damage from
abrasiveness and increased rapid momentum change.

Efficiency:
You can note graphically by figure 4 which compares efficiencies that smaller outlet pressures
and lower outlet qualities result in higher efficiencies for the work output of a turbine. This comparison

was done using following equation. Note that this does not include efficiencies of the generator, boiler
or friction that is a part of the steam-turbine cycle. From analyzing the efficiency graph, it is safe to say
, +
=
=
+

Conclusion:
A possible way to overcome this dramatic heat loss in order to increase work efficiency would
be if there was some way to increase the incoming velocity to add more momentum to the steam, and
reduce the condensation of the vapor. However, this may induce issues with the material composition
of the rotors and stators, if they will be able to handle that much force being applied to them. More
research would need to be done on the topic of high steam velocities taking in to account quality and
change in steam enthalpy.

Works Cited:
http://www.turbinesinfo.com/steam-turbine-efficiency/
http://www.learnengineering.org/2013/02/working-of-steam-turbine.html
http://www.nationalboard.org/index.aspx?pageID=164&ID=235