Author : Sunil Chore, Pratik Kshirsagar and S. A. Kulkarni

The mini steam power plant is an example of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) control system. For the steam generator, pressure and temperature of water, heat input are the input key parameters while for turbine pressure, temperature and mass flow rate of steam are key variables at input. The thermodynamic design of boiler involves time taken for the superheated steam at design pressure at required mass flow rate. This superheated steam is given to the turbine. This reaction type steam turbine is designed and manufactured as conventional steam turbine is not possible to manufacture to miniature size. With two major modifications stepper motor is upgraded to steam turbine on the lines of Tesla Turbine. The instrumentation for boiler and steam turbine are mentioned in this paper. The trials are conducted on steam generator and turbine together, by connecting the steam generator output to steam turbine through insulated pipes. So heat input is overall input to mini steam power plant while angular velocity and torque generated by the steam turbine are the overall outputs of this mini power plant. In the case discussed here, the superheated steam at 2 bar pressure and 1100C at 5gm/ sec is produced by steam generator and the steam turbine with 30,000 rpm at 0.217 Nm torque.

Keywords: Mini Steam Power Plant, Rankine Cycle, Heat Flux, Steam Generator, Bond Graph, Superheated Steam, Screened Rankine Cycle, Tesla turbine, Steam turbine, Bladeless Turbine

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.7, No.6 (Nov/Dec 2017)