BHEL to establish the India’s first High Temperature Spin Test Rig for coal based thermal power plants

Under the Clean Energy Research Initiative of the Department of Science & Technology, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) will set up a facility to assess Low Cycle Fatigue effects in rotors for coal-based Thermal Power Plants in India. This will help India soon manufacture its own super alloy steam turbine rotors, marking another mark in Atmanirbhar Bharat in this sector. 

The efficiency enhancement of coal-based thermal power plants depends on the use of nickel-based superalloy materials as against chrome-based steels widely used now. Advanced Ultra Super Critical (AUSC) consortium selected the nickel-based Alloy 617M. The alloy is industrially available and the AUSC consortium has expressed confidence in indigenous development of the alloy. The lack of experimental data on the performance of Alloy rotors, however, creates a challenge for effective usage of the alloy in the Indian AUSC power plant.

DST is providing support to Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited BHEL (R&D), Hyderabad for the establishment of High-Temperature Spin Test Rig (HTSTR). BHEL team with the guidelines of ASME standards has formulated a unique test protocol for accelerated testing.

 

DG Sets, Nitrogen Blowers, and Transformer for Rotor Test Rig

The facility will be India’s first such facility for experimental validation of the design of AUSC steam turbine rotor relating to creep-fatigue damage (deterioration of metals and alloys subjected to a cyclic thermomechanical load at elevated temperature) and will also be the only one of its kind in India in terms of establishing a real size engineering experimental set-up.

For further details contact Dr. K Ramakrishna at kramakrishna@bhel.in or Manish Chandra Gupta at manishg@bhel.in