Power Industry - Gas & Steam Turbine Test

Steam Turbine efficiency, reliability and service condition must be accurately measured for a fossil fueled power plant to provide higher unit outputs. The benefit of improved steam turbine efficiency is more affordable electricity and fewer greenhouse gases. This same concept can be used in a steam turbine development test cell. Scanivalve's model DSA3218 pressure scanner uses relatively inexpensive piezoresistive sensors and safety purge valves to continuously measure turbine pressures while the turbine is operating under normal loads. This system will provide gapless data at very high accuracy. The safety purge valves, described in Scanco Application Note No. 6 & 7, protect the pressure sensors from the potentially harmful steam pressure media. These data may be used to determine turbine efficiency, indicate possible compressor blade tip erosion, or other performance problems. These sensors normally could not be used to measure liquid or high temperature steam media pressures. However, this system has a continuous purge feature that isolates the sensors from the harsh media without affecting the accuracy (+/- .05% full scale) of the pressure measurement.