In both conventional and nuclear power plants, the high thermal load of thick-walled elements occurs during start-up and shutdown. Therefore, thermal stresses should be determined on-line during plant start-up to avoid shortening the lifetime of critical pressure elements. It is necessary to know the fluid temperature and heat transfer coefficient on the internal surface of the elements, which vary over time to determine transient temperature distribution and thermal stresses in boilers critical pressure elements. For this reason, accurate measurement of transient fluid temperature is very significant, and the correct determination of transient thermal stresses depends to a large extent on it. However, thermometers used in power plants are not able to measure the transient fluid temperature with adequate accuracy due to their massive housing and high thermal inertia. The article aims to present a new technique of measuring transient superheated steam temperature and the results of its application on a real object.

This paper proposes an effective method for determining thermal stresses in structural elements with a three-dimensional transient temperature field. This is the situation in the case of pressure elements of complex shapes. When the thermal stresses are determined by the finite element method (FEM), the temperature of the fluid and the heat transfer coefficient on the internal surface must be known. Both values are very difficult to determine under industrial conditions. In this paper, an inverse space marching method was proposed for the determination of the heat transfer coefficient on the active surface of the thick-walled plate. The temperature and heat flux on the exposed surface were obtained by measuring the unsteady temperature in a small region on the insulated external surface of a pressure component that is easily accessible. Three different procedures for the determination of the heat transfer coefficient on the water-spray surface were presented, with the division of the plate into three or four finite volumes in the normal direction to the plate surface. Calculation and experimental tests were carried out in order to validate the method. The results of the measurements and calculations agreed very well. The computer calculation time is short, so the technique can be used for online stress determination. The proposed method can be applied to monitor thermal stresses in the components of the power unit in thermal power plants, both conventional and nuclear.

The aim of this paper is to develop a method of determining the heat transfer coefficients on the inner surface of the pipeline and outer surface of the thermometer used to measure the temperature of a fluid flowing under high pressure. The method is based on the solutions to the inverse heat conduction problems for the thermometer and the pipeline wall. The heat transfer coefficients are determined based on the measurement of the temperature of a cylindrical metal thermometer and the temperature of the wall of a cylindrical pipeline. The temperature sensor is located in the pipeline wall close to the inner surface. The correlations for the Nusselt numbers used to determine heat transfer coefficients on the outer surface of the thermometer and the inner surface of the pipeline contain unknown coefficients which are found using the least squares method. The unknown coefficients are selected so that the sum of the squares of differences between the fluid temperature determined based on the measurement of the temperature of the pipeline wall and the fluid temperature obtained from measurements inside the thermometer, calculated for several dozen set time points, is as small as possible.

The indirect evaporative cooler (IEC) has excellent potential to replace or improve conventional vapor compression equipment in HVAC and refrigeration applications. This could be achieved by using the M-cycle (dew-point evaporative cooling technology). This thermodynamic concept makes it possible to derive a large amount of energy from the air stream (as latent heat released during water evaporation into the working air stream) and use it for another air stream (product). Its application has also spread to other sectors, such as water desalination and distillation, power plants, or NOx reduction. This paper provides an overview of the M-cycle mainly in air conditioning (MAC, D-MAC, H-MAC) and refrigeration (MCT, M-condenser). Various integrated solutions are described, showing improved effectiveness in terms of the wet-bulb temperature and the dew point. The design features of consolidated solutions are better In terms of the flow distribution, geometry, or volume. Most of the improvements confirm the great potential of the M-cycle to increase the unit or the system efficiency due to lower energy and water consumption.

Two methods for monitoring the thermal stresses in pressure components of thermal power plants are presented. In the first method, the transient temperature distribution in the pressure component is determined by measuring the transient wall temperature at several points located on the outer insulated surface of the component. The transient temperature distribution in the pressure component, including the temperature of the inner surface is determined from the solution of the inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP). In the first method, there is no need to know the temperature of the fluid and the heat transfer coefficient. In the second method, thermal stresses in a pressure component with a complicated shape are computed using the finite element method (FEM) based on experimentally estimated fluid temperature and known heat transfer coefficient. A new thermometer with good dynamic properties has been developed and applied in practice, providing a much more accurate measurement of the temperature of the flowing fluid in comparison with standard thermometers. The heat transfer coefficient on the inner surface of a pressure element can be determined from the empirical relationships available in the literature. A numerical-experimental method of determination of the transient heat transfer coefficient based on the solution of the 3D-inverse heat conduction problem has also been proposed. The heat transfer coefficient on the internal surface of a pressure element is determined based on an experimentally determined local transient temperature distribution on the external surface of the element or the basis of wall temperature measurement at six points located near the internal surface if fluid temperature changes are fast. Examples of determining thermal and pressure stresses in the thick-walled horizontal superheater header and the horizontal header of the steam cooler in a power boiler with the use of real measurement data are presented.

In this paper, two accurate methods for determining the transient fluid temperature were presented. Measurements were conducted for boiling water since its temperature is known. At the beginning the thermometers are at the ambient temperature and next they are immediately immersed into saturated water. The measurements were carried out with two thermometers of different construction but with the same housing outer diameter equal to 15 mm. One of them is a K-type industrial thermometer widely available commercially. The temperature indicated by the thermometer was corrected considering the thermometers as the first or second order inertia devices. The new design of a thermometer was proposed and also used to measure the temperature of boiling water. Its characteristic feature is a cylinder-shaped housing with the sheath thermocouple located in its center. The temperature of the fluid was determined based on measurements taken in the axis of the solid cylindrical element (housing) using the inverse space marching method. Measurements of the transient temperature of the air flowing through the wind tunnel using the same thermometers were also carried out. The proposed measurement technique provides more accurate results compared with measurements using industrial thermometers in conjunction with simple temperature correction using the inertial thermometer model of the first or second order. By comparing the results, it was demonstrated that the new thermometer allows obtaining the fluid temperature much faster and with higher accuracy in comparison to the industrial thermometer. Accurate measurements of the fast changing fluid temperature are possible due to the low inertia thermometer and fast space marching method applied for solving the inverse heat conduction problem.