Bring Your Old Turbine Into The 21st Century
When your old turbine needs new blades or nozzles, why replace "in kind"? For
a small incremental cost, you can turn your old clunker into a modern powerhouse
with increased output and greater reliability.
OEMs typically offer in-kind replacement because they focus on new units. At
TurboCare, we focus on the specific needs of the installed fleet. For us, replacement
is an opportunity to apply modern design principles within the existing turbine
casing. Our goal is to improve reliability and increase efficiency - and hundreds
of success stories prove that we know how to do it.
And because we have our own manufacturing facilities and produce virtually every
turbine part in house, we can turn your work around fast. In many instances we
can engineer, design, fabricate and install a more efficient and reliable way
for your old turbine to crank out more power within a typical maintenance outage.
For more information, see Steam Turbine Uprates.
Figure 1. This CFD simulation of the flow through a stationary nozzle is typical of the
advanced analysis tools used by TurboCare to assess potential efficiency improvements.
TurboCare has developed unique design methodologies - for example:
- Enhanced stage designs: We match modern airfoil shapes with a variety of turbine dovetails to yield enhanced stage designs that can improve an OEM's original equipment. Many of these designs are tailored for a specific application and offer benefits that are unavailable elsewhere.
- More efficient nozzles: TurboCare's sophisticated analysis tools have led to the development of advanced nozzles that minimize aerodynamic losses and maximize efficiency.
Figure 2. Early nozzles used converging inlet channels to first accelerate the steam and then turn it, resulting in high secondary losses. The TurboCare design turns the steam first and then accelerates it, reducing secondary losses and flow separation.
- More efficient rotating blades: Limitations imposed by obsolete manufacturing methods often result in sub-optimal vane shapes - but you don't have to remain limited by ancient technology. TurboCare's advanced design tools can customize blade contours to reduce losses while accurately matching stage design conditions. Our twisted blade designs improve not only the vane profile but also the relationship between the steam incidence angle and the blade metal angle. The TurboCare blade can take advantage of the variation in steam flow as it progresses from what is typically an impulse design at the root of the blade to a reaction design at the tip.
Figure 3. A comparison of an original tall-height rotating blade and the more efficient and reduced-stress replacement designed by TurboCare.
Figure 4. This detailed stage analysis shows the progression from primarily impulse design at the root of the blade to reaction design at the tip.
Customer Benefits
- Improved thermodynamic performance for older installed units - more power from the same steam.
- Upgraded blade and nozzle materials and design for improved reliability.
- Fast turnaround for enhanced components - typically within a standard maintenance outage.
- Minimum incremental cost to move beyond a "replace-in-kind" knock-off..
- Best available technology for your fleet - regardless of original equipment manufacturer.
Features
- Complete analysis of your units' current limitations and the potential for improvement.
- Advanced design and technology based on more than 150 years of collective design experience with virtually every type of rotating equipment.
- Designs that employ the most advanced software modeling and simulation tools in the business.
- Blades and nozzles custom-designed for particular applications.
- In-house manufacturing and extensive inventory of parts and stock materials.