Schulenberg T. Combined Cycle Power Plants 2016 torrent

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Combined cycle power plants are a combination of gas turbines driving a generator and producing enough heat with their exhaust gas that they can generate steam which, in turn, is driving steam turbines.
The first combined cycle power plants came up in the 1980s, produced by ABB, Siemens, GE and Westinghouse to substitute conventional steam turbine plants because of higher efficiency and lower plant erection costs.
The breakthrough of combined cycle power plants was around 1990, when advanced aero-engine technologies were applied to heavy duty gas turbines to increase their turbine inlet temperature.
While GE had these technologies in-house, ABB and Siemens cooperated with Rolls Royce and Pratt& Whitney, respectively, to learn about high temperature materials and cooling technologies for their turbine blading.
As a consequence, there were times at the end of the last century when the combined cycle net efficiency was increasing by around 1% point each year.
Usually, these plants are firing natural gas and use light oil as a back-up fuel in case that natural gas would temporarily not be available