CFD Modeling of Heat Recovery Steam Generators using
Fluent
V.V. Sunil Kumar Vylta, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, University of
Kentucky
vvvyt12@uky.edu
George P.-G. Huang, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, University of Kentucky
Combined Cycle power plants have recently become a serious alternative for
standard coal- and oil-fired power plants because of their high thermal efficiency,
environmentally friendly operation, and short time to construct. The combined
cycle plant is an integration of the gas turbine and the steam turbine, combining
many of the advantages of the both thermodynamic cycles using a single fuel.
By recovering the heat energy in the gas turbine exhaust and using it to
generate steam, the combined cycle leverages the conversion of the fuel energy
at a very high efficiency. The heat recovery steam generator forms the backbone
of combined cycle plants, providing the link between the gas turbine and
the steam turbine. The design of HRSG has historically largely been completed
using thermodynamic principles related to the steam path, without much regard
to the gas-side of the system. An effort has been made using
resources at both UK and Vogt Power International to use computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) analysis of the gas-side flow path of the HRSG as an integral
tool in the design process. This talk focuses on how CFD analysis can be
used to assess the impact of the gas-side flow on the HRSG performance and
identify design modifications to improve the performance.