High-reliability gas turbine combined-cycle development program. Phase I. Final report
The results of the General Electric study indicated that the availability goals could be met at all levels of equipment, from the combustion-turbine unit to the total plant, but that mean-time-between-failures (MTBF) goals could only partially be met. The combustion-turbine unit alone could approximately meet the MTBF goal (9000 hours), while the combustion-turbine system could only reach an MTBF of about 1000 hours. When the steam cycle and its electric generator, associated equipment, and balance-of-plant items were added, the total plant MTBF was predicted to be no greater than roughly 500 hours. The field-data analyses indicated that the number of forced outages in the combustion-turbine system were caused mainly by the ancillary equipment, while the major contributor to the number of forced outage hours was the combustion turbine. Although some of the combustion turbines perform well, they offer the greatest potential for improvement. Accessories such as the control system and the fuel system also offer a great potential for improving the reliability performance. It was hoped that field-data analysis and reliability trade-off analysis would result in a clear picture of the desired changes and their contribution to improved reliability; however, the field data were not specific enough, and the analytic effort contained sufficient compromises, so that a definitive list of reliability-improving changes was not feasible. It was feasible, however, to determine some beneficial design parameters and to arrive at a design with a significant improvement in reliability. These modifications include the application of redundancy, improvement in accessories (such as controls and instrumentation) and the addition of diagnostic capabilities.
- Research Organization:
- General Electric Co., Schenectady, NY (USA). Gas Turbine Div.
- OSTI ID:
- 6599815
- Report Number(s):
- EPRI-AP-1681(Vol.2)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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