A Review of the Operational Behaviour and Design of Direct Contact Feed Water Heating Plants for Large Thermal Power Stations

Abstract

Condensate heated by direct exposure to bled steam in pressure vessels gravitates through heaters in cascade and is transferred by pumps to the next cascade or to the deaerator-storage tank.

Direct contact heaters are proved to be thermally effective but the systems in which they are incorporated are shown by operational experience, by review and by analysis to need careful and detailed design for trouble-free operation.

Operational experiences are described together with predicted modes of behaviour of the cascades when subjected to extreme conditions of operation and to fault conditions.