Management Method to Handle Frequent Start-up & Shutdown Operation in Power Plant Using Steam Turbine Digital Twin Technology

To confront to global climate change, the power generation industry has been given the goal of reducing air pollutants in the stream of decarbonization, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Climate Agreement.In order to economically achieve these goals, power plant utilities need to come up with a plan to change the operation method while minimizing reinforcement of existing facilities.However, operating a power plant, which is typically constructed with large and massive components, in a different pattern involves many risk factors.Accordingly, this research proposed a method of utilizing digital twin system for the steam turbine which is one of the major facilities that make up power plants.The steam turbine digital twin system was developed by combining traditional mechanical engineering and materials engineering with ICT technology to simulate various operating patterns in advance to prevent unexpected problems that may arise when operating actual facilities in extreme modes.Based on the simulation operation results, the optimal facility operation method is derived.Additionally, the steam turbine digital twin system provides a method to diagnose the facilities' reliability changes in advance.In particular, this study proposed a method to establish a virtual operation scenario by allowing the user to selectively combine multiple sections from past operation history in order to overcome the difficulty of having to operate all the equipment related to the steam turbine for power plant simulation operation.Through this method, the status and reliability changes of the steam turbine were analyzed.