Simple cycle combustion turbine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007)

A Simple Cycle Combustion Turbine (SCCT) is a type of gas turbine most frequently used in the power industry. It differs from a combined cycle machine in that it has no provision for waste heat recovery.

[edit] Advantages

The main advantage of an SCCT is the ability for it to "cycle" or be turned on and off within minutes. This is unlike many other Power Plants that may have a minimum time of being online once started. This "Minimum Up" is a common term in the power industry when referring to this requirement. Due to its cycling ability SCCTs are useful for supplying power during peak demand. Therefore they are usually used as peaking power plants, which can operate from several hours per day to a couple dozen hours per year, depending on the electricity demand and the generating capacity of the region. In areas with a shortage of base load and load following power plant capacity, a gas turbine power plant may regularly operate during most hours of the day and even into the evening. A typical large simple cycle gas turbine may produce 100 to 300 megawatts of power and have 35–40% thermal efficiency. The most efficient turbines have reached 46% efficiency.

SCCTs require smaller capital investment than either coal or nuclear power plants and can be scaled to generate small or large amounts of power. Also, the actual construction process can take as little as several weeks to a few months, compared to years for base load power plants.

[edit] Disadvantages

A simple cycle combustion turbine has a lower thermal efficiency than a combined cycle machine.

[edit] References

This article does not cite any references or sources. (December 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.