Steam Turbine

A steam turbine is a turbine which is driven by the pressure of steam discharged at high velocity against the turbine blades. As a mechanical device, a steam turbine extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam, and converts it into useful mechanical work. It has almost completely replaced the reciprocating piston steam engine, invented by Thomas Newcomen and greatly improved by James Watt primarily, because of its greater thermal efficiency and higher power-to-weight ratio. Because the turbine generates rotary motion, it is particularly suited to be used to drive an electrical generator - about 80% of all electric generation in the world is by use of steam turbines.

The steam turbine is a form of heat engine that derives much of its improvement in thermodynamic efficiency through the use of multiple stages in the expansion of the steam, as opposed to the one stage in the Watt engine, which results in a closer approach to the ideal reversible process. In a steam turbine, the steam is expanded, generating work, in a number of stages. These stages are characterized by how the energy is extracted from them and are known as impulse or reaction turbines. Most modern steam turbines are a combination of the reaction and impulse design. Typically, higher pressure sections are impulse type and lower pressure stages are reaction type.

Large steam turbines are used by power stations to drive electric generators to produce most of the world's electricity. Most of these centralized stations are of two types: fossil fuel power plants and nuclear power plants. The turbines used for electric power generation are most often directly coupled to their generators. As the generators must rotate at constant synchronous speeds according to the frequency of the electric power system, the most common speeds are 3000 r/min for 50 Hz systems, and 3600 r/min for 60 Hz systems. In installations with high steam output, as may be found in nuclear power stations, the generator sets may be arranged to operate at half these speeds, but with four-pole generators.