| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1734746 | Energy | 2011 | 7 Pages |
The erosion of turbine components causes the decrease in turbine efficiency; increase in the maintenance cost and down time for turbine repair. All these factors contribute to the plant cost and cause the revenue losses. It is, therefore, essential to study the amount of efficiency loss owing to the erosion of turbine components due to the silt particles coming in water. The present study has been carried out to investigate the effect of silt erosion for different silt laden parameters and operating parameters such as silt concentration, size of silt particles, jet velocity and operating hours of the turbine on efficiency loss in Pelton turbine buckets.It has been found that turbine efficiency loss depends strongly on silt and operating parameters. A correlation has also been developed as a function of silt parameters and operating condition for percentage of efficiency loss. The developed correlation may be useful for turbine manufactures in order to predict the efficiency loss of a Pelton turbine at the manufacturing stage of a turbine under a given silt content water for a particular site.
Research highlights► The sediment present in the water exerts force on the turbine components; as a result the turbine components get deformed, which leads to efficiency loss and eventually the system failure. ► India face severe silt erosion problems in turbines which over a period of time drastically reduce the overall efficiency of power generation system. ► The objective to investigate the erosive wear of Pelton buckets is based on the consideration that the maintenance of buckets after erosion is costly in comparison to other components. ► Keeping this in view, the present study is undertaken to investigate the effect of silt erosion on Pelton turbine buckets.
