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Introduction

1.1 Energy and Fluid Machines

The rapid development of modern industrial societies was made possible by the large-scale extraction of fossil fuels buried in the earth's crust. Today, oil makes up 33% of world's energy mix, coal's share is 30%, and that of natural gas is 24%, for a total of 87%. Hydropower contributes 7%, and nuclear's share is about 4%, and these increase the total from these sources to 98%. The final 2% is supplied by wind, geothermal energy, waste products, and solar energy [101]. Most of the biomass is excluded from these, for it is used largely locally, and thus, its contribution is difficult to calculate. The best estimates put its use at 10% of the total, in which case, the other percentages need to be adjusted downward appropriately [61].

1.1.1 Energy conversion of fossil fuels

Over the last two centuries, engineers have invented methods to convert the chemical energy stored in fossil fuels into usable forms. Foremost among them are methods for converting this energy into electricity. This is done in steam power plants, in which combustion of coal is used to vaporize steam, and the thermal energy of the steam is then converted to shaft work in a steam turbine. The shaft turns a generator that produces electricity. Nuclear power plants work on the same principle, with uranium, and in rare cases thorium, as the fuel.

Oil is used sparingly this way, and it is mainly refined to gasoline and diesel fuel. The refinery stream also yields residual heating oil, which goes to industry and to winter heating of houses. Gasoline and diesel oil are used in internal-combustion engines for transportation needs, mainly in automobiles and trucks, but also in trains. Ships are powered by diesel fuel and aircraft by jet fuel.

Natural gas is largely methane, and in addition to its importance in the generation of electricity, it is also used in some parts of the world as a transportation fuel. A good fraction of natural gas goes to winter heating of residential and commercial buildings and to chemical process industries as raw material.

Renewable energy sources include the potential energy of water behind a dam in a river and the kinetic energy of blowing winds. Both are used for generating electricity. Water waves and ocean currents also fall into the category of renewable energy sources, but their contributions are negligible today.

In all the aforementioned methods, conversion of energy to usable forms takes place in a fluid machine, and in these instances, they are power-producing machines. There are also power-absorbing machines, such as pumps and compressors, in which energy is transferred into a fluid stream.

In both power-producing and power-absorbing machines, energy transfer takes place between a fluid and a moving machine part. In positive-displacement machines, the interaction is between a fluid at high pressure and a reciprocating piston. Spark ignition and diesel engines are well-known machines of this class. Others include piston pumps, reciprocating and screw compressors, and vane pumps.

In turbomachines, energy transfer takes place between a continuously flowing fluid stream and a set of blades rotating about a fixed axis. The blades in a pump are part of an impeller that is fixed to a shaft. In an axial compressor, they are attached to a compressor wheel. In steam and gas turbines, the blades are fastened to a disk, which is fixed to a shaft, and the assembly is called a turbine rotor. Fluid is guided into the rotor by stator vanes that are fixed to the casing of the machine. The inlet stator vanes are also called nozzles, or in hydraulic turbines inlet guide vanes.

Examples of power-producing turbomachines are steam and gas turbines and water and wind turbines. The power-absorbing turbomachines include pumps, for which the working fluid is a liquid, and fans, blowers, and compressors, which transfer energy to gases.

Methods derived from the principles of thermodynamics and fluid dynamics have been developed to analyze the design and operation of these machines. These subjects, and heat transfer, are the foundation of energy engineering, a discipline central in the program of study of mechanical engineering.

1.1.2 Steam turbines

Central station power plants, fueled either by coal or uranium, employ steam turbines to convert the thermal energy of steam to shaft power to run electric generators. During the year 2016, coal provided 30%, and nuclear fuels 20%, of the electricity production in the United States. For the world, the corresponding numbers are 40% and 11%, respectively. It is clear from these figures that steam turbine manufacture and service are major industries in both the United States and the world.

Figure 1.1 shows a 100-MW steam turbine manufactured by Siemens AG of Germany. Steam enters the turbine through the nozzles near the center of the machine, which direct the flow to a rotating set of blades. On leaving the first stage, steam flows (in the sketch toward the top right corner) through the rest of the 12 stages of the high-pressure section in this turbine. Each stage consists of a set of rotor blades, preceded by a set of stator vanes. The stators, fixed to the casing (of which one-quarter is removed in the illustration), are not clearly visible in this figure. After leaving the high-pressure section, steam flows into a two-stage low-pressure turbine, and from there, it leaves the machine and enters a condenser located on the floor below the turbine bay. Temperature of the entering steam is near , and its pressure is close to . Angular speed of the shaft is generally in the range 3500-15000?rpm (rev/min). In this turbine, there are five bleed locations for the steam. The steam extracted from the bleeds enters feed-water heaters and from them back to a boiler. The large regulator valve in the inlet section controls the steam flow rate through the machine.

Figure 1.1 The Siemens SST-600 industrial steam turbine with a capacity of up to 100?MW.

Source: Courtesy Siemens press picture, Siemens AG.

In order to increase the plant efficiency, new designs operate at supercritical pressures. Critical pressure for steam is , and its critical temperature is . In an ultra-supercritical plant, the boiler pressure can reach and turbine inlet temperature, .

1.1.3 Gas turbines

Major manufacturers of gas turbines produce both jet engines and industrial turbines. Since the 1980s, gas turbines, with clean-burning natural gas as a fuel, have also become important in electricity production. Their use in combined cycle power plants has increased the plant's overall thermal efficiency to just under 60%. They have also been employed for stand-alone power generation. In fact, most of the power plants in the United States since 1998 have been fueled by natural gas, and they now account for 34% of the electricity production. Unfortunately, production from the old natural gas fields of North America is strained, even if new resources have been developed from shale deposits. Projections show increasing use of natural gas in the energy mix in the United States, although it is still unclear how long the new deposits last since these wells deplete rapidly.

Figure 1.2 shows a gas turbine manufactured also by Siemens AG. The flow is from the back toward the front. The rotor is equipped with advanced single-crystal turbine blades, with thermal barrier coatings and film cooling. Flow enters a three-stage turbine from an annular combustion chamber, which has 24 burners and walls made from ceramic tiles. These turbines power the 15 axial compressor stages that feed compressed air to the combustor. The fourth turbine stage, called a power turbine, drives an electric generator in a combined cycle power plant for which this turbine has been designed. The plant delivers a power output of 292 MW.

Figure 1.2 An open rotor and combustion chamber of an SGT5-4000F gas turbine.

Source: Courtesy Siemens press picture, Siemens AG.

1.1.4 Hydraulic turbines

In those areas of the world with large rivers, water turbines are used to generate electric power. At the turn of the millennium, hydropower represented 17% of the total electrical energy generated in the world. The installed capacity at the end of year 2016 was 1064000?MW, but generation was 451000MW; therefore, their ratio, called a capacity factor, comes to 0.38.

With the completion of the 22500-MW Three Gorges Dam, China has now the world's largest installed capacity of 319000?MW and generated 28000?MW of power, based on year 2014 statistics. Canada, owing to its expansive landmass, is the world's second largest producer of hydroelectric power, with generation at 44000?MW from installed capacity of 76000?MW. Hydropower accounts for 58% of Canada's electricity needs. The sources of this power are the great rivers of British Columbia and Quebec. The next largest producer is Brazil, which obtains 43000?MW from an installed capacity of 89000?MW. Over 80% of Brazil's energy is obtained by water power. The Itaipu plant on the Paraná River, which borders Brazil and Paraguay, generates 12600?MW of power at full...