Development of Performance Deterioration Diagnosis Method for Gas Turbine Combined Cycle Power Plants

Recently, it is more necessary to maintain or improve the thermal efficiency of actual thermal power plants to reduce CO2 emission and energy consumption in the world, and it is also important to reduce the maintenance cost of commercial thermal power plants. Thus, it is crucial to investigate power plant performance deterioration factors and solve problems related to these factors promptly when the thermal efficiency decreases. However, it is difficult to understand the internal state of power plants sufficiently and to determine power plant performance deterioration factors only from operation data because actual thermal plants are composed of many components and are very complex systems. In particular, it is more difficult to understand performance deterioration in gas turbine combined cycle (GTCC) power plants than in steam power plants because the performance changes markedly in GTCC power plants depending on atmospheric conditions (temperature, pressure, humidity). In other words, when thermal efficiency changes, it is difficult to determine whether the cause is the change in external factors or that in the performance of the component. Therefore, we develop a method based on heat balance analysis to calculate the immeasurable quantity of state and the efficiency of each component in GTCC power plants, and to correct the performance of each component in a plant to a standard state using the performance function obtained from long-term operation data. Through the method, the analysis of the effects of deterioration factors on thermal efficiency becomes possible, and the performance of a plant can be simulated when the operation conditions are changed. Thus, we can determine the main factor that affects thermal efficiency using our method.Copyright © 2010 by ASME