English: power plant terminology

Hello to all, first of all, I wish you a Happy New Year. I have questions about English terminology used when is talked about power plants. Often I read "Combustion plants". In wikipedia I found that Combustion turbine is often called Gas turbine. It is somewhat confuzing to me. If we talk about gas turbine, then associated power plant is Gas plant which means that main fuel is natural gas i.e. mixture of natural gas and compressed air is burnt in chamber and taken to turbine. But also, one could conclude that fuel can be dizel or crude oil. My question is: "Does term combustion plant mean plant that is fueled by natural gas or dizel/crude oil, or just gas"? Also I don't understand why it is called gas turbine when there is no explicit statement that fuel is natural gas and one might conclude that oil can be used? I hope someone familiar can explain this a little further. I heard that significant number of Gas turbine can be run both on natural gas and crude oil as main fuel. Can you confirm this?

Reply to
pando
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I believe a combustion plant is any power plant where fuel is burned.

Sometimes the fuel (coal, wood chips, oil, biomass etc) is burned in a furnace to boil water to steam which is used to turn "steam turbines"

Sometimes the fuel (kerosene vapor, natural gas, etc) is burned directly in a "gas turbine", which is a "combustion turbine" (a steam turbine is not a combustion turbine)

Reply to
mike.j.harvey

My local utility built what they call a "combustion turbine" plant a couple of years ago - its primary fuel is natural gas, but it can also run on diesel oil. A "gas turbine" uses hot expanding gases to turn the turbine, as opposed to a "wind turbine", "steam turbine" or "hydraulic turbine".

Someone who knows turbomachinery better than I may comment on the use of "crude oil" - I always thought some form of distillate fuel was used, not just straight crude.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Shymanski

Thank you for the reply. Well, I ask this because in article that I read three termins are used: hydroelectric plant (that is clear because it's name) thermal plant (I think this is common name for plants that have boiler in which steam is produced that is later used to make work in turbine) combustion plant (here I wasn't sure about fuel that is used). Are there any other comments...

Reply to
pando

The term 'thermal' might also describe non-combustion energy sources, such as geothermal, solar or nuclear.

Reply to
Paul Hovnanian P.E.

As you note, many of the natural gas burning turbines are dual fuel equipped to burn #2 fuel oil (diesel) also.

Areoderivative turbines (those based on airplane jet turbines) usually can only burn #2 oil. Heavy turbines (larger units meant strictly for power generation) can burn heavier oils. The combustion chamber is of a different design for oils heavier than #2 so it would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming to change a turbine between fuel sources. So if the primary fuel is natural gas, only #2 fuel oil would be burned as the backup fuel source.

The heavy fuel for turbines is a special blend of #4 fuel oil. Normal #4 fuel oil that would be burned under a boiler or burned in a diesel engine can contain unevaporateable residuals. Metals and other contaminants that wouldn't be a problem for boilers or diesel engines are a problem for turbine blades so a distilate only #4 fuel oil is used.

Reply to
Matthew Beasley

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