Flow Characteristics Analysis of Widows' Creek Type Control Valve for Steam Turbine Control
- PHILOSOPHIA, Inc., Seoul National University, San 56-1 Sillim-dong, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, 151-742 (Korea, Republic of)
The steam turbine converts the kinetic energy of steam to mechanical energy of rotor blades in the power conversion system of fossil and nuclear power plants. The electric output from the generator of which the rotor is coupled with that of the steam turbine depends on the rotation velocity of the steam turbine bucket. The rotation velocity is proportional to the mass flow rate of steam entering the steam turbine through valves and nozzles. Thus, it is very important to control the steam mass flow rate for the load following operation of power plants. Among various valves that control the steam turbine, the control valve is most significant. The steam flow rate is determined by the area formed by the stem disk and the seat of the control valve. While the ideal control valve linearly controls the steam mass flow rate with its stem lift, the real control valve has various flow characteristic curves pursuant to the stem lift type. Thus, flow characteristic curves are needed to precisely design the control valves manufactured for the operating conditions of nuclear power plants. OMEGA (Optimized Multidimensional Experiment Geometric Apparatus) was built to experimentally study the flow characteristics of steam flowing inside the control valve. The Widows' Creek type control valve was selected for reference. Air was selected as the working fluid in the OMEGA loop to exclude the condensation effect in this simplified approach. Flow characteristic curves were plotted by calculating the ratio of the measured mass flow rate versus the theoretical mass flow rate of the air. The flow characteristic curves are expected to be utilized to accurately design and operate the control valve for fossil as well as nuclear plants. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21016442
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2006 International congress on advances in nuclear power plants - ICAPP'06, Reno - Nevada (United States), 4-8 Jun 2006; Other Information: Country of input: France; 5 refs; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2006 international congress on advances in nuclear power plants - ICAPP'06, 2734 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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