The doors are open

Unit EC 4 is at the last part of the overhaul and the maintenance doors of the enclosure of the lube oil tank are still open.
So I could take a picture of one of the most important parts of the unit: the lube oil tank.
It has a capacity of about 30 cubic meters, so about 30 tonnes of oil...
That's a bit more than in your car.
At the left: two electric motors, each driving a pump that's hanging in the tank.
One of the pumps is driven by the normal mains of the plant, that's the standby pump, only used at standstill of the shaft and start-up, the other one (the main pump) is driven by it's own generator, at the end of the turbine shaft. That is to make sure there is always enough lube oil when the shaft is rotating at normal speed and a complete black out occurs.
Some turbine manufacturers implement a lube oil pump, directly driven by the shaft of the turbine.
In the middle are two mist eliminators, these fans maintain a small vacuum in the tank, and they discharge oilmist to the roof of the building.
The oil droplets in the mist are captured and flow back into the tank. Also a small vacuum is in this way maintained on the bearings, ensuring no oilmist comes out.
Here's some information.
At the right you can see two filters, a clean one is always in standby.
The green pipes are leading cooling water to the oil coolers, also here is always one cooler in service.
The oil comes back from the machine at 60 degC (140F) and is cooled back to 40 deg C (104 F).

Here in LARGE...

Comments
Sign in or get an account to comment.