Influence from the blade installation angle of the windward axial fans on the performance of an air-cooled power plant

Abstract

Air-cooled power plants have been extensively applied in the dry areas with the ACSC (air-cooled steam condensers) to reject the waste heat from the turbine exhaust. However, the performance of the relevant condensers is sensitive to the meteorological conditions due to its exposing in the ambient. As a result, it is too difficult for the air-cooled power plants to operate at the design efficient points under the severe wind conditions such as high ambient temperature and strong wind, and it has great significance to optimize the operation mode for a better flow and heat transfer characteristics. In the paper, a 2 × 600 MW power plant is modeled to investigate the performance of the air-cooled power plants. The blade installation angle of the axial fans is modified off the design case to obtain a new power plant performance, which is compared to the design value at prevailing wind angle and five different designated wind speeds. It is found that the alternation of the blade installation angle for the windward fans changes the performance of the fan array as well as the heat transfer characteristics for the finned-tube exchangers in the air-cooled steam condenser. The net power of the power plant and the thermal efficiency of the closed Rankine cycle differ from the alternation of the blade angle.