What are turbines made of (in power stations)

Oh, my! Run one of those for ten minutes and your annual (maybe whole decade) fuel budget will go up in smoke! WAYYY too big for personal flying.

Jon

I was talking to a race engine builder in the UK about 20 years ago and the subject turned to jet dragsters and what the engines cost, he said the engines were surprisingly cheap not being of any use for aircraft anymore but runners. He went on to say that what would hurt your wallet was finding a pump that would satisfy the fueling requirements. I suspect with the price of scrap metal these days that has changed a bit bit but it was an interesting comment regarding the engine price.

"David Billington" wrote

I saw a helicopter jet engine go for a few hundred bucks at an auction. That guy dropped dead young with ALL the toys, maybe 2 dozen steam engines etc.

I wonder if a log splitter pump would provide enough GPM and pressure to fire it up for demos.

jsw

Iggy, My local scrap buyer pulled out one of these on a recent visit to him. Hand held XRF Analyzer. Over the years I had a bunch of worn out forklift contactor tips/buss bars that I saved when I changed them at work. They were copper bars with some kind of allow tips. He told me exactly what the composition was. The tips were silver and worth a bit but I would have had to remove it from the copper. A torch worked but negated any cost savings. He did pay me #

1 copper so he must have paid one of his guys to separate the silver from the copper. Nice tool to have but he mentioned a cost of $15,000 for the tool.... OUCH

Very nice. I recently scrapped some three phase contact tracks for a I beam hoist. Had to pull copper out of metal ways.

i

Ayup, right there in his white plastic breast pocket protector.

-- The human brain is unique in that it is the only container of which it can be said that the more you put into it, the more it will hold. -- Glenn Doman

Prices have dropped by 2/3, "only" $4911 today, double occupancy.

-- The human brain is unique in that it is the only container of which it can be said that the more you put into it, the more it will hold. -- Glenn Doman

I doubt there's more than a handful of plants running at the temps that require the alloys you mentioned.

Cut & pasted from a recent paper on steam turbine materials...

****************** ABSTRACT Ultra-supercritical (USC) power plants offer the promise of higher efficiencies and lower emissions. Current goals of the U.S. Department of Energy?s Advanced Power Systems Initiatives include coal generation at 60% efficiency, which would require steam temperatures of up to 760 °C. In prior years this project examined the steamside oxidation of alloys for use in high- and intermediate-pressure USC turbines. This steamside oxidation research is continuing and progress is presented, with emphasis on chromia evaporation.

INTRODUCTION Goals of the U.S. Department of Energy?s Advanced Power Systems Initiatives include power generation from coal at 60% efficiency, which requires steam conditions of up to 760 °C and

340 atm, so called ultra-supercritical (USC) steam conditions. A limitation to achieving the goal is a lack of cost-effective metallic materials that can perform at these temperatures and pressures. Some of the more important performance limitations are high-temperature creep strength, fire-side corrosion resistance, and steam-side oxidation resistance. Nickel-base superalloys are expected to be the materials best suited for steam boiler and turbine applications above about 675 °C]. Specific alloys of interest include Haynes 230 and 282, Inconel 617, 625, 718, and 740, Nimonic 105, and Udimet 720Li. Alloy compositions are given in Table 1. ****************** In other words, steam turbines that require those materials are perhaps in development. There's no reason to believe the rotor that Iggy asked about includes anything especially exotic or valuable in significant amounts.

I worked 12 and 16 hours a day for a couple months straight rebuilding the turbines for the Centralia plant back in about 1981.

I've been wondering this for a while.

Just out of curiosity -- given your pseudo-username above, why did you miss out on using the fourth rotation/reversal of the same letter, 'q'? That one is your 'b' rotated 180 degrees, or your 'p' flipped left for right. (Just as your 'd' relates to the other two, 180 degree rotation or flipped left for right. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

initials, maybe?

--

One should be concerned with using a clean fuel.

This example is a cool one

There is/was a company making motorcycles with small mil-surplus helo power plants (not propane fueled), and a story about Jay Leno test riding one of 'em.

There was a very interesting video/TV show (Discovery channel, maybe) about one of the fastest jet powered Bonneville cars(?).. huge twin engines, and someone asked *when does the second engine get fired?*.. answer was.. it doesn't, it's just there to keep the car on the ground.

Could be fun for a dragster though.

Some years back, we went the Seattle International Raceway for a special chevrolet day drag race event. Someone had a turbo jet powered dragster there as part of the show. After a bunch of smoke events and short leaps down the raceway, got back to the starting lights and did a real run for the 1/4 mile. Sure didn't take long to get to the end. Quite a show! Never been back as they raised the ticket price.

Paul

That's weird. I assumed the front of that thing was the compressor section. If it isn't, how does that design work? Never thought of a steam turbine having a compressor section.

I only ran a steam turbine once, and used it to drive another for very low pressure steam. We were experimenting with falling film vapor compression evaporation, flash off on the tube side, into separator, then compress the vapors, desuperheat, and put back in on shell side. Worked, but bad economics, too much capital.

Pete Keillor

I'd have said those were HP or IP blades. As for materials, it depends on the age of the plant, also whether it was fossil or nuclear. If you have more details I could do some fishing.

Fossil, for sure.

i

So maybe running at a maximum steam temperature of about 650 C? The following is from a 1971 UK reference, so could be right for recently decommissioned plant.

The usual HP and IP rotor materials were ferritic steels (chrome moly vanadium)which are good for 540 C, with 3% Cr-Mo or 2 1/4% nickel chrome moly for the LP.

Most blading was 12% Chrome moly vanadium steel for strength and creep. The high temperature blades would contain Niobium for improved creep. Nimonics were also used (expensive). LP blading was also 12% chrome moly vanadium, but heat treated for high strength (because these blades are longer and wider). Titanium was used for lacing wires.

On 1/19/2012 3:06 PM, Ignoramus19378 wrote: ...

The name of the plant would be the best thing to know...it's easy then to know what the cycle conditions are.

Unless it was a supercritical plant, it won't be very exotic at all, though.