Author(s)

Buliaminu Kareem^1*, Theophilus Ewetumo², Michael K. Adeyeri¹, Akinlabi Oyetunji³, O. E. Olatunji¹

¹Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, The Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria.
²Department of Physics, The Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria.
³Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, The Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria.

The steam turbine is a prime mover that converts kinetic energy in steam into rotational mechanical energy through the impact or reaction of the steam against the blades. The aim of this study is to design a steam turbine for a small scale steam power plant with target of producing electricity. The turbine is driven by the heat energy from palm kernel shells as a renewable energy source obtained at a lower or no cost. The study was concentrated on design of turbine elements and its validation using computer packages. Specifically, the microturbine design was limited to design, modeling, simulation and analysis of the rotor, blades and nozzle under the palm kernel shell as fuel for the micro power plant. In blade design, stress failures, efficiency and blade angle parameters were considered. In casing volume design, the overall heat transfer and mean temperature, and different concepts were applied. The thermal distribution on stator and rotor was considered in order to determine its level of tolerance. The design software packages used for design validation were Solidworks and Comsol Multiphysics for analysis. Simulation results showed that the designed steam turbine can adequately tolerate change in stress/load, torsion/compression, temperature and speeds.

Palm Kernel Shell, Steam Turbine, Power Plant, Design Software, Renewable Energy

Kareem, B. , Ewetumo, T. , Adeyeri, M. , Oyetunji, A. and Olatunji, O. (2018) Design of Steam Turbine for Electric Power Production Using Heat Energy from Palm Kernel Shell. Journal of Power and Energy Engineering, 6, 111-125. doi: 10.4236/jpee.2018.611009.