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The higher cost of turbines and the associated gears or generator/motor sets is offset by lower maintenance requirements and the smaller size of a turbine in comparison with a reciprocating engine of equal power, although the fuel costs are higher than those of a diesel engine because steam turbines have lower thermal efficiency. To reduce fuel ...
When steam power started to be used, as the first power source driven by the combustion of a fuel rather than renewable natural power sources, this was as reciprocating engines. Primitive turbines and conceptual designs for them, such as the smoke jack, appeared intermittently but the temperatures and pressures required for a practically ...
Steam engines and turbines operate on the Rankine cycle which has a maximum Carnot efficiency of 63% for practical engines, with steam turbine power plants able to achieve efficiency in the mid 40% range. The efficiency of steam engines is primarily related to the steam temperature and pressure and the number of stages or expansions. [15]
A steam–electric power station is a power station in which the electric generator is steam-driven: water is heated, evaporates, and spins a steam turbine which drives an electric generator. After it passes through the turbine, the steam is condensed in a condenser. The greatest variation in the design of steam–electric power plants is due ...
Ray-traced image of a piston engine. There may be one or more pistons. Each piston is inside a cylinder, into which a gas is introduced, either already under pressure (e.g. steam engine), or heated inside the cylinder either by ignition of a fuel air mixture (internal combustion engine) or by contact with a hot heat exchanger in the cylinder (Stirling engine).
Microturbines have around 15% efficiencies without a recuperator, 20 to 30% with one and they can reach 85% combined thermal-electrical efficiency in cogeneration. [2] The recuperated Niigata Power Systems 300 kW (400 hp) RGT3R thermal efficiency reaches 32.5% while the 360 kW (480 hp) non recuperated RGT3C is at 16.3%. [7]
The power-recovery turbine sits underneath a two-stroke diesel engine. A turbo-compound engine is a reciprocating engine that employs a turbine to recover energy from the exhaust gases. Instead of using that energy to drive a turbocharger as found in many high-power aircraft engines , the energy is instead sent to the output shaft to increase ...
Many engine–generators use a reciprocating engine, with fuels mentioned above. This can be a steam engine, such as most coal-powered fossil-fuel power plants use. Some engine–generators use a turbine as the engine, such as the industrial gas turbines used in peaking power plants and the microturbines used in some hybrid electric buses.