What Are Turbines ? - Types of Turbines & Their Applications
What Are Turbines ? - Types of Turbines & Their Applications
What Are Turbines ? - Types of Turbines & Their Applications
What is turbine ?
A turbine is a rotating part which converts kinetic energy of a working fluid into useful mechanical
energy and/or electrical energy. Simple, right? Well, nothing is simple when you go deeper.
There are set of blades mounted on a rotor which helps in extracting energy from the moving fluid.
The efficiency of turbines depend on the design of the blades.
Different applications need different designs & designing them isn’t a layman’s job.
Steam turbines consist not only rotating blades called as rotor but also static blades called as stator.
Rotors & stators are placed alternately in order to extract most energy out of it. This method is
called as compounding.
Also, if you observe, the moving buckets in impulse turbine are designed to get pushed by the
steam. While the rotor blades in reaction turbine are aerofoiled shape, which lets itself generate
reaction & also let steam maintain its velocity !
In the image: The steam first flows through high pressure(H.P) turbine followed by intermediate
pressure (I.P) turbine. Then again after reheating the steam, it is made to flow through low pressure
(L.P) turbines (huge set of blades).
The reason behind increase in blade sizes from inner side to outer side is because steam expands
while losing its pressure & kinetic energy & giving it to turbines.
Gas turbines :-
Gas turbines in other words are internal combustion engines, which are not only used in
powerplants for generating electricity but also for propelling airplanes & helicopters. Gas turbines
as a whole system has a axial compressor at the inlet. These are sets of rotating blades which suck
huge amount of air & compress it which also increases the temperature. This air is then supplied to
the combustion chamber. Fuel is added into the combustion chamber & ignitor ignites the fuel. Thus
large amount of exhaust gases are produced which are made to flow through turbines.
The different types of gas turbines/jet engines are –
1. Turbojet
2. Turbofan
3. Turbojet
4. Turboshaft
5. Ramjet
The above mentioned are open cycle gas turbines where the exhaust gases are let directly into
atmosphere. The other type i.e closed cycle gas turbines where the exhaused are reused again for
reheating are used in powerplants.
Here is more detailed working of gas turbines & different types of gas turbines in detail.
Wind turbines :-
Wind turbines are a boon to mankind- affordable, clean & sustainable ! Some windfarms are so big
that they could produce 50MW of power.
Coming to working of wind turbines, the story remains same as other turbines. The rotor has 3
blades & are designed in such a way that when wind flows straight through them, they start rotating.
The only problem here is wind turbines rotate at a very low of RPM. The low RPM doesn’t produce
electricity of required frequency & that is why we require a gearbox which increases the speed of
shaft. The output shaft is then connected to the generator.
The 3 primary types of wind turbines are –
1. Horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWT)
2. Savonius vertical-axis wind turbine (Savonius VAWT)
3. Darrieus vertical-axis wind turbine (Darrieus VAWT)
HAWTs are much older & common while VAWTs produce less power, are less efficient & hence are
not used commonly.
Well, what’s interesting is why do wind turbines have 3 blades ?
Adding more number of blades increases torque which is not the need here. Increase in torque
decreases the RPM which is undesirable. Also cost increases significantly.
Also lowering the number of blades to 2 leads to gyroscopic instability & periodic stresses which
makes it unsafe.
Hence, 3 blades makes wind turbines the most efficient in all terms