Moscow Power Engineering Institute (TU), Krasnokazarmennaya ul. 14,
Information is given on the scientific-methodical,
technological, and computer developmental works lying in the heart of a
diversified set of software tools used in thermodynamic and thermal engineering
calculations, for professional training of specialists in thermal power
engineering, and for education of students.
Today, when the tasks to be solved in power engineering are becoming
more and more complicated and the requirements posed to the knowledge and
skills of the operating personnel of thermal power stations (TPSs) are becoming more and more demanding, reliable and
economically efficient operation of power-generating equipment cannot be
guaranteed without making wide use of informational technologies, including the
Internet and intranets. Informational and telecommunication technologies are
used in higher schools at an increasingly growing rate; much attention is being
given to development of electronic educational resources: textbooks, problem
books, laboratory tutorials, and knowledge testing systems. The possibility of
remotely using them is also envisaged.
The way the process of professional training, retraining, and advanced
training of the TPS personnel is organized is in many
respects similar to the education process at higher schools: the trainees at TPS, as well as students at higher schools must gain the
basic theoretical knowledge in general-education and special disciplines.
However, operating personnel already possess many professional skills, they have experience in taking technological
decisions and implementing them in practice within a limited interval of time.
The training of specialists at higher schools is also aimed at working out certain
general skills in them, although these skills might be not so
wide as those required for carrying out operative control, maintenance, and
repairs of power-generating equipment.
The commonness of the tasks and objectives that have to be achieved
during professional training of operators and young specialists, the
sophistication of computer engineering, and the development of Internet were
the factors that prompted the small team of the MEI Chair for Technology of
Water and Fuel to develop an electronic encyclopedia of physicochemical
technologies in power engineering, the work on which was started in the 1980s
[1—13]. Later on, this team has grown in number to involve students, as well as
and workers of the limited society Trieru. Among the
people who were also involved in the work on the encyclopedia were teachers of
the Chair for Boiler Units and Environmental Problems of Power Engineering, the
Chair of Steam and Gas Turbines, the Chair for the Theoretical Principles of
Thermal Engineering, the Chair of Thermal Power Stations, the Chair of
Chemistry and Electrochemical Power Engineering, the Chair for Heat-and-Mass
Transfer Processes and Installations, the Chair of Engineering Graphics, and
others. Among the sources that were additionally included into the encyclopedia
were the soft (electronic) versions of materials presented
Apart from being filled with basic information on the
chemical-technological processes and heat-generating and mechanical equipment
at TPSs and the technology for preparing water and
fuel, which is presented in the form of modern didactic and multimedia
facilities (25 computer-aided multimedia-based education courses), the EEPE includes the following:
(i) a series of
materials (including reference data) on a network support offered to the
calculation methods for optimizing the parameters of power installations that
are accessible via the Internet;
(ii) a three-dimensional interactive atlas of
graphic models of heat-generating, mechanical, and water-treatment equipment;
and
(iii) software facilities (training simulators)
for improving and assessing the professional skills of the operating personnel
of chemical departments at power stations and heating networks.
Given below are the brief characteristics, purpose, and contents of some
EEPE sections.
(1) The software system WaterSteamPro (www.wsp.ru)
has been developed for calculating the main properties of water and steam over
a wide range of operating parameters using the equations suggested by the
International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam (www.iapws.org). The
WaterSteamPro system has been integrated into the Internet using the technology
Mathcad Calculation Server.
The application computer programs for the properties of gases offer the
possibility to calculate the thermodynamic parameters of such gases as N2,
O2, CO, CO2, H2O, SO2, air NO, NO2,
Ar, Ne, H2, and their mixtures under the
conditions of their being in the ideal-gas state at temperatures from 200 to
2500 K and to calculate on this basis the isobaric heat capacity, enthalpy, and
entropy of air and fuel combustion products taking into account its thermal
dissociation. (see http://twt.mpei.ac.ru/ochkov/WSPHB/Engindex.html)
The application computer programs can be used in all popular software
packages (from Excel to Maple) that run both on personal computers and servers.
(2) The list of tasks that run on the server includes standard and
special problems in the field of thermal engineering and water treatment; such
an arrangement allows the users to start calculation documents on the server
and to access them remotely via the Internet in the interactive mode, thus
making it unnecessary to install special licensed codes on the computers of
users. For example, certain power performance characteristics of turbine
generators can be calculated as functions of several parameters, these
characteristics can be compared with the typical values, or problems contained
in guiding documents in a text format can be solved, all in the automatic mode.
For the development of the software package Russian Mathcad Application
Server, the team of the Moscow Power Institute was awarded with a diploma of
the
(3) The files of three-dimensional graphic models of boiler, turbine,
and water-treatment equipment, placed on CD- or DVD-ROM disks, have been
included into the software system Maintenance and Repairs of Steam Turbines,
Boilers, and other Heat-Generating and Mechanical Equipment, which is one of
the EEPE modules. It is supplemented with a
description of technological operations, video films, and animation clips
explaining both the operation and different stages of activities on assembling
and disassembling power-generating equipment during maintenance and repairs. An
example of a turbine rotor 3D model is shown in Fig. 1
(the other examples of power equipment models can be found in the Internet at http://twt.mpei.ac.ru/ochkov/trenager/Turbines/3DModels with the endings
/Rotor.htm,
/klapan.htm, etc.)
(4) The software facilities for improving and assessing the professional
skills of the personnel of chemical departments (training simulators) were
developed on the basis of existing codes, typical instructions, and guiding
documents, and with involvement of highly skilled experts from a number of
organizations and power enterprises. Along with standard training simulators,
individual integrated training simulators developed on the set of power
station’s operating manuals, process diagrams, and operational charts have been
produced on the orders from more than 30 power stations. The list of such
training simulators includes those for the following systems:
(i) pretreatment of
water in clarifiers and filters (Fig. 2);
(ii) demineralization of water in parallel-flow
and counterflow ion-exchange filters;
(iii) preparation of water for making up a
heating network;
(iv) purification of oil-contaminated
condensate and wastewater from a water treatment plant, including that from a
reverse-osmosis plant;
(v) condensate
polishing units; and
(vi) reagent storage and preparation systems.
The training devices were developed so that the operations on starting
the technological equipment from standby mode or after repair and on running it
during normal operation could be simulated; this allows the tasks pertinent to
the basic training of maintenance personnel to be solved. In addition, the
devices were augmented with functional modules simulating the occurrence,
development, and removal of emergency situations themselves, as well as their
consequences.
A new line in the development of training devices simulating the
operation of water-treatment plants for chemical departments that are being
retrofitted or constructed anew, namely, the use of project documents, is worth
mentioning. This will allow the maintenance personnel to learn the operations
on running new equipment well before it is put in operation.
Apart from training simulators for water treatment plants, training
devices have been developed for power installations equipped with type K, T,
and PT turbines able to simulate the keeping of water chemistry and monitoring
it when boiler and turbine equipment operate under normal (design) operating
conditions and when typical malfunctions related to deviations from normal
water chemistry occur (a wide range of such malfunctions can be simulated). Figure 3 shows the main screen of the training
simulator for keeping water chemistry with the scheme for automatic and manual
monitoring of chemical conditions for a district power station equipped with
K-300-240 turbines.
All types of the above-mentioned training simulator programs for the
personnel of chemical departments are used in holding regular regional and
all-Russia contests of professional skills among comprehensive teams of TPS personnel comprising shift supervisors and technicians
of chemical departments. The criteria by which the teams are assessed during
these contests include the skills in operating the equipment under normal
conditions and in emergency situations, the knowledge of guiding and regulatory
documents, as well as chapters of special disciplines. Standard training
simulators have been developed for holding such contests; these allow the
following to be checked:
(i) the knowledge of
the operating regulations and environmental aspects of equipment operation;
(ii) the knowledge of the safety norms and regulations, the correct way
of drawing up orders/permissions for carrying out different kinds of repair and
maintenance work in the chemical department;
(iii) whether the operator can identify violations of safety regulations
(this test is carried out using the training simulator called Video Pictures on
Safety Engineering, the computer program of which uses video films and
photographs of actual equipment with such violations;
(iv) whether the operator knows the theoretical
principles of and has skills in carrying out chemical analyses of aqueous
media; and
(v) whether the
operator knows and can use calculation procedures in the technology of water
treatment and maintenance of water chemistry.
Once the contest is over, the set of integrated training simulators,
including those produced on the order from a TPS, is
handed over to the customer and can be used for educating the personnel,
checking their knowledge and skills, and retraining them for the personnel to acquire
higher qualification categories and to master adjacent jobs; this, undoubtedly,
would help enhance the professional level of the workers of chemical
departments and the safety of their labor.
That the materials included into the Electronic Encyclopedia of Power
Engineering are of considerable practical value is confirmed by the fact that
they are being used as tutorials at 50 education organizations training
specialists in power engineering, and that they have been introduced, as a
matter of factory standard, at more than 200 power enterprises.
Specialists of MEI and OOO Trieru
constantly conduct creative work on filling the EEPE
with necessary materials, one of the outcomes from this work being new training
systems [14].
REFERENCES
3. V. F. Ochkov, V. F. Utenkov,
and K. A. Orlov, “Thermal Engineering Calculations in the Mathcad Environment,”
Teploenergetika, No. 2, 73—78 (2000) [Therm.
5.
7. V. F. Ochkov, “Open Calculations in the Internet of Water Treatment
Processes,” Energosber. Vodopodg., No. 3, 72—73
(2004).
9. V. G. Gribin and V. F. Ochkov, “The
Corporative Atlas of Power-Generating Equipment: Problems and Solutions,” Nov. v Ross. Elektroenerg., No. 2, 42—49 (2006).
11. S. G. Magid,
12. Yu. V. Arbuzov,
13. SO (
14. N. Yu. Pevneva, V. N. Piskov,
and A. N. Zenkov, “An Integrated Computer-Based
Training Simulator for the Operative Personnel of the 800-MW Power-Generating
Unit at the Perm District Power Station,” Teploenergetika,
No. 7, 31—35 (2007) [Therm. Eng., No. 7 (2007)].
FIGURE CAPTIONS
Key: 1. Address; 2. Type T-100/120-12.8-5 turbine. Medium-pressure
rotor; 3. (b)
Fig. 2. Screen of the
training simulator for operating the water pretreatment plant.
Aux---auxiliaries; SlTh---sludge thickener;
CR---cutoff regulator; Clr---clarifier; Dr---drain;
CS---coagulant solution; DCV---drain control valve; Sl---sludge; LCWT---lime
coagulated water tank; ClDr---clarified drain; PAMP---polyacrylamide metering
pump; LMP---lime milk pump; CMP---coagulant
metering pump; LM---lime milk; PA---polyacrylamide; CFWP---clarifying filter washing pump; W---washing; LCWP---lime coagulated water pump; WCV---washing
control valve; SWT---sludge water tank.
Key: 1. TVT Shell: Integrated Training
Simulator for operating the water pretreatment plant; 2. Annotation; 3. To the
beginning; 4. Back to the contents; 5. Aux; 6. SlTh;
7. CR; 8. Clr. 9. Dr; 10. CS; 11. DCV; 12. Sl;
13. LCWT;
14. ClDr; 15. From PAMPs;
16. To the sewage system; 17. To the drain channel; 18. From LMP; 19. From CMPs;
20. LM; 21. PA; 22. CFWP; 23.
W; 24. LCWP; 25. WCV; 26. SWT; 27. Exit; 28. Compressed
air to the chemical warehouse; 29. Compressed air to
the ionite trap of the Na-cation
plant; 30. Previous page; 31. Next page; 32. Cl
Fig. 3. Screen of the
training simulator for the maintenance of water chemistry. CSS---convective steam superheater;
PSS---platen steam superheater; ISS---intermediate
steam superheater; BGV---built-in
gate valve; URP---upper radiant part; MRP---medium radiant part; CWW---ceiling
waterwalls; LRP---lower
radiant part; WE---water economizer; HPH---high-pressure
heater; LPT---low point tank; UECP---unit
electrically driven pump; EFWP---electrically driven feedwater pump; TFWP---turbine-driven
feedwater pump; HPC---high-pressure
cylinder; MPC---medium-pressure cylinder; LPC---low-pressure cylinder; MHWC---main
heating-water converter; PHWC---peak heating-water
converter; LPH---low-pressure heater; HCCC---heating converter condensate cooler; ECP---electrically driven condensate pump; TCC---turbine condensate cooler; CPU---condensate polishing
unit; ESC---ejector steam cooler; GSC---gland steam
cooler; GH---gland heater.
Key: 1. Address; 2. TVT Shell: Simulator for Training
the Personnel to Perform Emergency Actions on Maintaining Water Chemistry in
Power Units Equipped with K-300-240 Turbines; 3. regulation system; 4. CSS; 5. PSS; 6. ISS; 7. BGV; 8. URP; 9. MRP; 10. CWW; 11. LRP; 12. WE; 13. P-20
14. HPH No.; 15. LPT; 16. to the condenser; 17. to the circulation water conduit; 18. Inlet
of O2; 19. UECP; 20. EFWP; 21. TFWP; 22. to the deaerator;
23. HPC;
24. MPC; 25. LPC; 26; Makeup; 27. MHWC; 28. PHWC; 29. Flows to the condenser; 30. LPH Nos.; 31. HCCC; 32.
Instrument readings; 33. Water
chemistry indicators; 34. Unit No.; 35; ECP; 36. TCC; 37. CPU; 38. ESC;
39. GSC; 40. GH; 41. Assignment; 42. Ready; 43. Phone; 44. Writing pad
