SILT EROSION IN HYDRO TURBINES- A REVIEW

SOURABH KHURANA1, KHUSHMEET KUMAR2, VARUN3 & ANOOP KUMAR4

1&2

Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Baddi University of Emerging Sciences and Technology, Baddi-173205, India 3&4 Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur-177005, India

Abstract :- Silt erosion in hydro turbines is a very acute problem and leads to huge losses to the hydropower industry. Erosive wear depends upon different parameters such as silt size, hardness and concentration, velocity of water and base material properties. In most cases, this can be minimized by controlling the above mentioned parameters, but during the monsoon season, it becomes impossible to control these parameters which cause erosion. It is observed that wear increases as these factors increases, which results in decrease in efficiency of turbines and finally breakdown of hydraulic turbines takes place. In the present paper studies carried out by various investigators has been discussed. Based on the literature survey various theoretical, experimental and case studies have been discussed with some remedial measures suggested by various investigators. Keywords - Erosion, Silt, Hydraulic Turbines, Efficiency.

I.INTRODUCTION Energy is required in each field of commercial and human activities. Energy generation is one of the major key factors for economic and social development in all the developed and developing nations of the world. The different sources of energy are hydro, thermal, nuclear and non-convectional energy resources like wind, solar and biomass. Presently in India the total installed capacity including all the resources is 182344.62 MW, of which the share for hydro energy is 21.22 % (Ministry of Power., 2012). Among the different sources of energy, hydropower is recognized as a renewable source of energy, which is economical, non-polluting and environment friendly. Water has been used as an energy source for thousands of years, with ancient civilizations using water to drive mills through the use of water wheels. Technology has grown over time and the potential for water as power source continuous to be prominent. The increasing worldwide demand for electric power resulted in an intensified utilization of available hydropower resources. Hydropower as a regenerative energy source is of increasing importance for future sustainable power supply. Hence a lot of importance is being given to develop hydropower potential. The management of hydropower plants for achieving higher efficiency of hydro turbines with time is an important factor, but the turbines shows declined performance after few years of operation as they get severely erode due to various reasons. One of the important reasons is erosive wear of the turbines due to high content of abrasive material during monsoon. During the rainy season, a large amount of sediment (as high as 20,000 ppm) is present in water and it becomes difficult to remove all these sediments before passing through the turbine. The loss of material caused by the impingement of tiny solid particles, which have a high velocity and impact on the material surface at defined angles, is called erosive wear (Goel and Prakash, 2010). Silt erosion is a result of mechanical wear of components on account of

dynamic action of silt flowing in water coming in contact with wearing surface. Therefore, silt flowing with water passing through the turbine is root cause of silt erosion in turbine components (Naidu., 2001). The silt mainly consists of quartz (70-98%), which is extremely hard (hardness 7 in Mohs scale) causing severe damage to the turbine components like buckets, nozzle and needle in case of impulse turbines and guide vanes, faceplates, runner blades and seal rings in case of reaction turbines (Singh., 1990). Silt erosion is a serious problem in a number of Indian hydropower stations especially those located in Himalayan region. This problem is aggravated due to increased silt size and content and is responsible for quick erosion and corrosion (Mann and Arya., 2001). Erosion wear effect in hydro turbines results in alteration of blade profile, increased vibration, fatigue damage, inefficient operation and system failure. Even Variation in particle size in the range typical to engineering applications can cause fundamental changes in the erosion mechanisms. A series of erosion tests on glass, steel, graphite and ceramics revealed that as particle size was increased from 8.75 m to 127 m in diameter, the mode of erosion changed from ductile to brittle. This caused the erosive wear peak to move from 300 to 800 impingement angle and even more significantly resulted in dramatically increase in erosive wear rates (Bardal et al., 1993). (Feng and Bell., 1999) stated that due to gas-solid flows, the erosion of ductile materials is also affected by the shape and kinetic energy of erodents apart from their particle size. Levy and Chik., 1983) have used angular steel grits and spherical steel shots for erosion of AISI 1020 steel. To examine the worn out surfaces of the specimen they used scanning electron microscope (SEM). They observed that the angular steel grits cause four times more erosion compared to that of spherical steel shots.

International Journal of Mechanical and Production Engineering (IJMPE) ISSN 2315-4489, Vol-1, Iss-1, 2012 34

Silt Erosion In Hydro Turbines- A Review

II. THEORETICAL INVESTIGATION It is generally considered that erosion damage is the gradual removal of material caused by repeated deformation and cutting actions. The process of erosion damage is influenced by number of factors, namely, the average velocity of particles, mass of particles, concentration of abrasive particles in fluid, size distribution of particles and their average grain size, angle of impingement, time interval of the attack and erosion resistance of structural material (Duan and Karelin.,2002). Bajracharya et al., 2008) established erosive wear rate of spear and efficiency reduction relationships from the field survey of chilmi hydro electric plant (CHEP), a pelton turbine based hydroelectric plant in Nepal. They proposed a relationship between erosion rate and the particle size at different quartz content levels which is presented as:

available. It was shown that the erosion level was strongly dependent on particle size. A fully 3D flow and erosion calculation around the guide vanes of the same Francis turbine was presented. It was shown that the geometry of the guide vane is including tip clearance, support and fillets lead to a complex flow field, which, as a consequence, resulted in a complicated fluid-particle interaction strongly affecting the erosion pattern. There was a good agreement between the numerically obtained erosion pattern and field test measurements. III. EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES (Padhy and Saini., 2011) conducted experiments to determine the effect of silt erosion on performance of hydraulic turbine. An experimental set up was designed and fabricated to carry out the proposed investigation (Fig. 1).

Erosion wear rate a (size )

Where erosive wear rate is in Kg/year, and a = 351.35 and b = 1.4976, for quartz content of 38% a = 1199.8 and b = 1.8025 for quartz content of 60% a = 1482.1 and b = 1.8125 for quartz content of 80% Relationship between erosion rate and reduction in efficiency was expressed as;

Efficiency reduction a (erosion rate )

Where a = 0.1522 and b= 1.6946

For predicting the silt erosion rate (Naidu .,1997) suggested the following expression:

W = S1 S 2 S 3 S 4 M r V x
Where S1 coefficient of silt concentration, S2 is coefficient of silt hardness S3 is coefficient of silt particle size, S4 is coefficient of silt particle shape, Mr Coefficient of wear resistance of base material. V is relative velocity of water. The values suggested for the exponent x are: 3 for Francis runner, 2.5 for guide vanes and pivot ring liner, 2.5 for pelton nozzle and 1.5 pelton runner buckets. (Padhy and Saini., 2009) have attempted to develop the correlation for normalized erosive wear rate was developed as a function of particle size, silt concentration, jet velocity and the time of operation:

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of silt erosion test equipment

The study has been carried out to investigate the effect of silt erosion for different silt laden parameters and operating parameters such as silt concentration, size of silt particles, jet velocity and operating hours of the turbine on efficiency loss in pelton turbine buckets. The author has concluded that the silt concentration, silt size, jet velocity are the strong parameters for efficiency loss in pelton buckets. It was also concluded that the percentage efficiency loss of a pelton turbine increased with an increased in silt concentration, silt size, jet velocity. It was also observed that the turbine power output has decreased with the mass loss in pelton buckets. (Chattopadhyay., 1993) conducted experiments to determine slurry erosion characteristics of AISI 316L, 15 wt % Cr-15 wt % Mn stainless steel and stellite powder alloy applied as overlay to cast ferritic stainless steel of CA6NM type, which was used as a normal turbine runner material. The tests were conducted in specially designed test equipment (Fig. 2).

W = 4.02 10 12 ( s ) 0.0567 (c)1.2267 (v) 3.79 t

(Mack et al. 1999) suggested a numerical model to predict the erosion on guide vanes and on labyrinth seals in hydraulic turbines. The prediction of erosion, based on Lagrangian calculation of particle paths in a viscous flow, was described for two components of a Francis turbine, for which results of field tests were

International Journal of Mechanical and Production Engineering (IJMPE) ISSN 2315-4489, Vol-1, Iss-1, 2012 35

Silt Erosion In Hydro Turbines- A Review

IV. CASE STUDIES (Singh., 2009) reported the case study of the Nathpa Jhakri hydropower station (6250) on river Satluj is the largest hydropower project in India and the first to be executed by Satluj Jal vidut nigam limited (SJVNL). The first unit was synchronized in September 2003 and the remaining units were synchronized by March 2004. The author has observed that the rate of material removal due to silt erosion is a function of I. II. III. IV. Silt Characteristics (concentration, size, shape and hardness). Base material characteristics. Striking angle of silt particles on metal surface. (Relative velocity)n where n=3-4 (in case of Francis turbine.)

Fig. 2 : Schematic of slurry erosion test equipment

The different wear rates of the alloys were explained in terms of the microstructure, hardness and work hardening rate. The samples were rectangular in section and of size 65 mm14mm 20mm and thick sand slurry was erodent. The author had concluded that 15 wt % Cr-15 wt % Mn stainless steel and stellite powder alloy applied as overlay showed better erosion resistance properties as compared with base material CA6NM steel. (Krause and Grein., 1996) designed a test rig to simulate the flow conditions in a turbine by carried out model tests with varying parameters with the X5CrNi13/4 steel normally used materials in hydro turbines. A natural sand/water mixture taken from a power plant reservoir and sand containing 99% quartz in various grain sizes were used for the tests. They have concluded that the abrasion rate is a function of velocity, sand content and proportion of hard components and size of sand particles. The maximum abrasion occurred in a range of 40-70 m. (Mann and Arya., 2001) studied the silt erosion characteristics of plasma nitriding and HVOF coatings along with commonly used steel in hydro turbines. For silt erosion characterization, hydrofoils scaled down to 1 10 of the actual hydro turbine blades were selected. The abrasive wear characterization was carried out as per ASTM G-65. Angle of incidence, velocity and Reynolds number were maintained similar to those that commonly occur in hydro turbine, simulating low as well as high-energy impingement wear. They concluded that HVOF coating showed superior performance than plasma nitrided steel.

Due to significantly high quantity of Silt passing which is recorded in concentration is 1,51,000 ppm through the hydraulic passages of the turbine Bronzed Bushes (Upper and Lower) , Wear rings, Guide vane sealing rings which are the underwater parts have suffered acute damages. This resulted in outages and longer downtime of machines which caused huge generation and revenue loss. To avoid erosion problems some design measures were taken, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling has been carried out by GE hydro to check the soundness of the design against silt erosion, a CAT plan has also is under implementation, Tungsten Carbide hard coating with HP-high velocity Oxyfuel (HVOF) thermal spray has been carried out with robotic arm to the parts which are prone to damage by silt and result of such coatings are encouraging. (Neopane et al., 2011) reported a field study at Cahua hydropower plant of 22 MW built in Peru which is having excessive sediment erosion as shown in (fig.3)

Fig. 3. Eroded guide vanes

International Journal of Mechanical and Production Engineering (IJMPE) ISSN 2315-4489, Vol-1, Iss-1, 2012 36

Silt Erosion In Hydro Turbines- A Review

Which illustrates the extent of sediment erosion in guide vanes and turbine runner. Sediment study conducted in this power plant indicated that the sediment concentration exceeded 120,000 tons of sediment only after six weeks of operation. The average content of quartz particles in the sediment was found to about 35% and feldspar was found about 30%. The high sediment concentration combined with high percentage of quartz and feldspar, which are harder than the turbine material (hardness 6-7 in Mohs scale) which was the main cause of excessive sediment erosion in the hydraulic machinery operating in these power plants. During monsoon season, a large amount of sediment (as high as 50,000 ppm) is carried by rivers and it become difficult to remove all these sediments before passing through the turbine and cause severe damage to the turbine components. (Thapa et al.,2005) during their case study at 60 MW khimti hydropower has investigated that the effect of suspended sediments. Due to the presence of high amount of sediments, the hydropower plant was designed with settling basins to screen 85% of all particles with a fall diameter of 0.13 mm and 95% of all particles with a fall diameter of 0.20mm. The investigators had observed that a significant amount of erosion had appeared in the turbine bucket and needles. Even though the settling basins were performing satisfactorily, particles smaller than the design size passed through the turbines and cause damage. Buckets thickness was reduced by about 1 mm toward the root of the bucket. Similarly the splitter of the bucket was eroded to saw tooth from the original straight edge. Even hard ceramic coatings were applied to minimize the effect of erosion on bucket and needle surface at the cost of around US$ 25,000 per runner, but performances were not promising. (Prasad et al., 1997) reported the case study of Salal (6115MW) hydropower station on river Chenab and Baira Siul (360MW) hydropower station on river Baira and Siul. The silt contents in the water of above rivers indicated the presence of 7595% of quartz having hardness 7-8 on Mohs scale and about 90% of silt particles are of size 0.25 mm. Due to high abrasive silt stay wanes made of carbon steel get eroded which is not a normal case of hydro machines. After 4000h of operation at Baira Siul guide vanes made of stainless steel, the loss was about 15% of metal, whereas in Salal this loss was approximately 10-12% of the design weight. The speed of machine does not decreases to braking limit even when guide apparatus get closed due to deep cuts on pressure side of surface of feather of all guide vanes and as a result adverse affect on thrust bearing has been observed. Pressure side of runner blades, crown and skirt of runner get eroded very fast. In two years of operation runner profiles get altered and

metal loss from runner is 10-12% in one year of operation. At Baira Siul Labyrinth gap increased from the design value of 0.8-1.2 to about 3 mm in one year of operation. At Salal, lower Labyrinth ring and sometimes portion of skirt of lower ring gets washed away in about 8-10 thousands running hours of machine, so there is increase in vibration level of machines at both power stations due to such type of erosion. V. CONCLUSION On the basis of present study we can conclude that silt erosion in hydro turbines cannot be avoided completely but can be reduced to an economically acceptable level. . In the present paper the process of erosion in hydro turbines through experimental and by analytical studies has been reported. Few case studies are also reported in the literature. Even some of the researchers provided different materials for turbine and coatings but improvement in most of the cases are not significant. Work on the effect of silt size, hardness, concentration and particle shape on erosive wear has been reviewed but further experimental and theoretical studies are required to study the effect of silt on hydro turbines. REFERENCES
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