Turbomachinery in Renewable Energy Applications - Power Engineering

Turbomachinery in Renewable Energy Applications - Power Engineering http://www.power-eng.com/articles/print/volume-114/issue-4/Features/...
By Nicholas C. Baines, Concepts NREC
Almost every type of renewable energy cycle requires a piece of turbomachinery. Compressors, fans,
blowers, pumps, turbines all are critical components in a wide range of renewable energy applications, from
wind energy to ocean energy to bottoming cycles to hydrogen pumping. While many people are familiar with
these types of turbomachinery components in general, not everyone knows when or why a certain
turbomachinery configuration is selected over other available configurations.
For instance, when is a centrifugal compressor better suited for a given application than an axial compressor?
How is stage count determined (when and why can a single stage centrifugal compressor replace a
multi-stage axial compressor). This article offers an overview of how turbomachinery configurations are
selected and what parameters drive the selection to better educate users of turbomachinery, including users
in the renewable energy field. Some classic turbomachinery selection charts will be shown and explained.
Turbomachines are devices that transfer energy between a turning shaft and a fluid. That definition
encompasses a range of machines that is so wide as to be baffling for anyone charged with the task of
selecting or designing a new machine for a new process. This is even truer in new green energy than in
conventional applications, where the energy source is likely to be natural and highly variable and the
technology base and experience that engineers can draw on is limited.
The transfer of energy can be in either direction. In a turbine, it is from the internal and kinetic energy of the
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fluid to mechanical energy of the rotating shaft. In a compressor or pump, mechanical energy is transferred to
the fluid to increase its pressure or head. In some cases, such as pumped storage systems, the same
machine must do both duties: pumping the fluid into storage when surplus energy is available and expanding
it to generate power at other times. Turbomachines can be open or closed flow devices. Open flow machines
such as wind turbines and marine propellers have no casing or enclosure around the moving parts. Closed
flow machines include hydro turbines and a wide diversity of pumps, fans, compressors and blowers.
Turbomachines have to work with fluids of widely differing properties. A principal classification is between
incompressible fluids, such as water and most liquids, where the density changes are insignificant, and
compressible fluids including air and most gases, where the density changes considerably in passing through
the machine. Other machines, such as steam turbines, may have to work with a mixture of the two, as the
steam condenses into water droplets during the expansion through the turbine.
The ranges of size and speed are also very large. Wind turbines can be 100 meters or more in diameter and
rotate at a few revolutions per minute (rpm). Hydro turbines are up to 10 meters in diameter, rotating at a few
tens of rpm. At the other end of the scale, miniature turbines used in liquefying helium are less than 1
centimeter in diameter and rotate at 1 million rpm. The pressure drop across a wind turbine is small
(measurable in millimeters of water), whereas the pressure rise generated by a downhole pump in an oil well
is sufficient to drive fluid to the surface, a head rise of several thousand meters.
Faced with such a diversity of size, form and function, there is clearly a need to impose some order by finding
suitable ways to classify and organize turbomachinery, so designers can make quick and reliable decisions
when it comes to selecting machines for new applications.
Experience has taught engineers not just in turbomachinery but in many other areas that a useful method of
handling this type of diversity is dimensional analysis. Using this, the fundamental parameters that describe
the application, including flow rate, pressure or head change and speed; the size of the machine; and the
thermodynamic and physical properties of the fluid, are combined into groups that are dimensionless. Not only
does this make the problem independent of the set of units used, but more importantly, it reduces the number
of parameters the engineer has to handle. Instead of a large number of fundamental parameters, the machine
and its performance can be represented using a smaller and more manageable set of dimensionless groups.
Dimensional analysis is a flexible tool, because it only defines mathematically how many dimensionless
groups are required to specify the machine and its operation, but it does not say what those groups should be.
This is up to the engineer, who can select the groups that are most useful in any set of circumstances. When
selecting between the different types of turbomachine, one particular set of dimensionless groups has proved
to be especially useful and these are groups that exclude the machine size. They are, therefore, functions
only of the operational conditions (and if necessary the fluid properties) and are called specific speeds.
Specific speed is actually a misnomer, because although the shaft speed is invariably one of the fundamental
parameters included, the group itself does not relate to any speed of, or within, the machine. Several different
specific speed groups can be defined, but the one most commonly used, is Ns = NQ/(gH)3/4, where N is the
rotational speed, Q is the volume flow rate, and gH is the head change across the machine. (Different values
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of specific speed result from using different units for these parameters. If a consistent unit set is used, the
resulting specific speed is dimensionless and this has been used in this article.) The constituent parameters
all have to do with the machines operation or duty and not with its size. Specific speed, therefore, can be
looked upon as a shape or form parameter, which gives information about the type of machine. Other
information will later be necessary to determine the actual size of the machine that is required, but for the
purposes of selecting the type of machine, specific speed is a valuable parameter.
Experience has shown that different types of turbomachines work best at particular specific speeds. Figures 1
and 2 are some of the classic charts compiled to aid selection. These examples show hydro turbines and
pumps. Similar charts are available for other types of application. The efficiencies shown here are indicative of
what is achievable, but should not be used for performance prediction. The actual efficiency will be a function
of many other effects that are not represented on these graphs. The duty of the machine allows the engineer
to determine the specific speed without reference to the machine size. The appropriate specific speed chart
then can be used to select the machine type on which to focus attention.
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The choice of specific speed defines the machines form, as shown in the pump example in Figure 3. A low
specific speed means a combination of low flow Q and high head gH, for which the impeller shape at the
left-hand end of the diagram is suitable. The low flow requires narrow channels and the high head is achieved
by the large centrifuging effect created by the inlet/outlet diameter ratio of the impeller. On the other hand, a
high specific speed implies a high flow and low head, at the right-hand end of the diagram. The high flow
requires a large passage area, and the low head can be achieved with an axial impeller configuration.
This same effect can be seen for a range of Francis turbine runners in Figure 4. The low specific speed
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runners are characterized by passages of small area and a large radius change from inlet to exit, giving a
large expansion of the flow from its incoming high head to exit at ambient conditions. For this purpose a radial
or centrifugal runner is required. The high specific speed runners have a much larger passage area and a
much lower inlet to exit radius ratio. Unlike the high specific speed axial pump, the incoming flow is still radial
and undergoes a change of direction to axial in the runner. The turning effect, however, is not the key to work
transfer from the fluid, it is the radius change that for high specific speed applications must be small to match
the low head of the incoming flow.
Specific speed is not the only dimensionless group that is useful for selecting turbomachines. Two other
groups to be considered are the head and flow coefficients. The head coefficient is the specific work transfer
(that is, power per unit mass flow rate) divided by the square of the rotor blade tip speed. The flow coefficient
is defined as the meridional velocity of the fluid (that is, the axial velocity in the case of an axial machine or
the radial velocity in the case of a radial or centrifugal machine) divided by the tip speed. Since meridional
velocity is volume flow rate per unit area, it is apparent how this coefficient relates to the machines flow rate.
Both coefficients also emphasize the importance of the tip speed of the rotor in determining machine
performance characteristics.
Two further selection charts, now showing head and flow coefficients, are depicted in Figures 5 and 6, for
work-absorbing (pumps and compressors) and work-producing (turbines) machines, respectively. Taking the
former, the air and marine propellers are examples of machines that have high flow, low head characteristics,
and this is the area of the diagram in which they are found. The axial fan found in turbofan engines is another
example of a high flow turbomachine. In this case, however, it is a highly refined aerospace product capable
of higher pressure rises (and hence head coefficient) than more mainstream fans. This is an example where
the level of technical refinement adds some complexity to machine selection. It also emphasizes that with all
of these experience-based charts, the limits of machine performance are somewhat fuzzy.
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Axial, mixed flow and centrifugal compressors form a spectrum covering the range of flow coefficients, so the
choice will depend strongly on the flow rate requirements. In the chart, single and multistage centrifugal
compressors are differentiated and this highlights another design decision to be made: the number of stages.
Many turbomachines can be made with multiple stages to share the work and pressure or head change. If the
work requirements are too great for a single stage, multiple stages must be considered. Areas of overlap
always exist where the same effect could be achieved using a small number of highly-loaded stages (that is,
high head coefficient per stage) or a larger number of lightly-loaded stages. Since lightly-loaded stages are
usually easier to design and more efficient than highly-loaded stages, an incentive exists to increase the stage
number, providing the manufacturing costs and installation size do not become excessive. So the multistage
compressor in Figure 5 comprises stages with lower head coefficients than the single stage compressor.
A similar pattern can be seen for expanders in Figure 6. Wind turbines and Kaplan (hydro) turbines are
examples of high flow, low head turbines. The axial gas turbine is another high flow turbine because for
airplane applications the size of the engine must be kept to a minimum to limit the aerodynamic drag of the
engines. This forces the turbomachine stages to have high flow coefficients, or high flow per unit area. To limit
the number of stages and hence engine weight, however, the head coefficient per stage is raised. Various
forms of gas and steam turbines occupy the high head regime of the chart, and for high head, low flow
applications, the Pelton wheel is best suited.
Because of the dimensional analysis, dimensionless groups are interrelated and specific speed can be
expressed as a function of head and flow coefficients. Lines of constant specific speed are also plotted in
Figures 5 and 6 to emphasize the point that high specific speed coincides with high flow, low head
applications and low specific speed with low flow, high head, applications.
The use of head and flow coefficients goes beyond the initial machine selection and is influential in choosing
the number of stages, as noted above. It also affects the turbomachine design itself. In many applications, a
need exists to maximize the power transfer per stage and minimize the number of stages. Excessively high
stage loading, however, limits the efficiency that is achievable. The stage loading coefficient can be reduced
by increasing the number of stages or by increasing the blade tip speed. The former increases the machines
complexity, size and cost and the latter increases the centrifugal stress in the blades and may limit the life of
the machine.
Selecting a small flow coefficient means keeping the fluid velocity low in the blade passages, which is
conducive to high efficiency, but also means that the flow passage area must be large. To minimize the size of
the machine, a higher flow coefficient must be selected. As with head coefficient, the flow coefficient can be
reduced by increasing the blade tip speed, at the cost of blade stress. Figure 7 illustrates the designers
dilemma: high efficiency requires low head and flow coefficients, whereas machine size and life goals may
require high head and flow coefficients. The designers skill lies in choosing the right compromise between
conflicting requirements such as these, but head and flow coefficients allow the problem to be expressed in
simple terms that are easily understood.
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Author: Dr. Nick Baines is a distinguished corporate fellow at Concepts NREC and has worked for the
company in a variety of positions including director of education and publications. Dr. Baines has extensive
experience teaching turbomachinery topics to a broad range of clients. He has worked in the field of
turbomachinery for more than 30 years. He has a wide knowledge of turbomachinery for various applications
and has been responsible for a large number of projects requiring the selection and design of turbomachinery.
Dr. Baines received his BA and MA in Engineering from St. Catharines College in Cambridge and his Ph.D
from the University of Bath.
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Turbomachinery in Renewable Energy Applications - Power Engineering http://www.power-eng.com/articles/print/volume-114/issue-4/Features/...

By Nicholas C. Baines, Concepts NREC

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