Reliability of low pressure Steam Turbine for Electricity Power Generation

Abstract

The reliability of the low pressure steam turbine of Sapele power station of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) over a ten years period (1994 -2003) have been investigated. The data used were records of Low pressure steam turbine failures and repairs kept by the maintenance sections of Sapele power station. The Failure rate, Repair rate, Mean time between failure (MTBF), Mean time to repair(MTTR) and the steam turbine reliability were determined. The reliability results for seven(7) of the years investigated was less than 0.2 . Six (6) of the 10 years studied have MTBF of less than 181 hours . In other words failure was expected after every 8 days for 60% of the years investigated. This indicated that the reliability of the steam engine was very low. Aging and maintenance is suspected to be the cause of the poor reliability of the turbine and remedial actions are recommended.

Keywords: reliability, steam turbine, power station, failure rate.