Thermal Modeling of HRSG Transient Behavior in Combined Cycle Power Plants

Abstract

Combined Cycle Power Plants (CCPP) are attractive electricity generation systems due to high cycle efficiency and quick response of the system to load change. Heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) is an important part of a CCPP and it is important to predict the HRSG operating conditions in transient and steady state modes. It should be emphasized that the biggest pressure and thermal stresses are imposed on HRSG superheater and evaporator tubes banks during transient periods (cold start up and load change). Due to these effects a software program was developed for analyzing the HRSG transient and steady state operating conditions. The HRSG software included arbitrary number of pressure levels (usually up to three) and any number of elements (superheater, evaporator, economizer, desuperheater and duct burner). In this paper theories and equations (mass/energy balance and heat transfer coefficients) applied for HRSG thermal analysis are described. Also HRSG program software outputs were compared with real data collected from HRSG cold start-up at Tehran CCPP with specified geometry and arrangement of elements. The closeness of two groups of data in this transient and steady state modes was acceptable. The numerical outputs in steady state condition also were found very close to GT MASTER program software outputs.