The Way to Remove White Plume in Combined Cycle Plant

Is it white? They like a black one better?

40 years ago we had a plume also that made the whole village drunk of toluene content. (smells sweet, but is a killer)

You can use beds of active carbon in a regeneration cycle. This will create pressure loss that feeds back to the burners or turbines. You might need a exhaust accelerator fan to keep these happy. Think of colossal beds in a tank (as through filter) with a tap to remove the water and contaminators.

First question what is the composition of the plume?

If it's water vapour tell em to F£&* off.
Del

Tell them if ALL customers turn off ALL of their electricity, the plume will disappear! -- JHF

Oops! I forgot to state the fuel name. We use natural gas as a fuel and feed natural gas to gas turbine. The flue gas goes out from the stack of HRSG. We installed SCR and SNCR. So when the plume is visible, it is more like white color. And I assume that the plume is visible due to water vapor in flue gas.

I suggest you ask the people complaining if they would like you to remove all the clouds from the sky too?

Have an analysis done.. if it's water vapour tell 'em to... well, what I said before (it may be more effective than the sarcasm)
Del

Agree with Del; if it's primarily steam, you shouldn't need to do anything, just have some better Public Relations to explain how environmentally friendly water vapor is. Maybe have your PR staff promote your company as a major sponsor of breast cancer awareness or some other popular, local cause - to show your company is concerned about such things. Sponsor boy scout/girl scout troups, youth sport leagues, etc.

But if you really want to get rid of the white steam plume, you might look at options like cooling towers and air mixers that would remove the 'appearance' of the plume.

At risk of being pedantic...
This is an engineering forum and steam is invisible... it could be steam that has condensed to water vapour.

Del

Oops; I knew dat...

Bingo!

You're actually distilling the water (as well as creating it in the combustions process), so you can tell them all about how you are purifying the atmospheric water.... don't need to mention Mother nature does the same thing on a far greater and quieter scale.

The first thing to do is to determine the source of the plume and the environmental conditions that make it so visible. If it's condensing water vapor then where is it coming from, you might have a tube leak in your HRSG, a quick look at your makeup water requirements should tell you pretty quickly.

On the other hand if you're in a high humidity area the ambient conditions are going to work against you unless you can figure out how to raise the exhaust temperature and/or dilute the exhaust gas with more air. Either way it's going to cost your overall efficiency.

Here's a paper with a solution, it's not exactly the same situation but the science and remediation efforts may spark your imagination.

Don't waste time or money solving problems that don't exist.

Del
(remember. The customer is usually wrong)

Increasing the heat will only raise the ceiling level of visibility, it cannot eliminate the white cloud when/where the vapor condenses due to temperature differential.

Although not being sure of where you are located nor where you are at in your EPA compliance with NOX emisions i suggest the following:

Keep in mind when you choose a direction that one of the newer methods for reducing NOX emissions in CCP NG turbines is by injecting water into the exhaust stream.

If your station has already addressed compliance with the new lower permissible NOX limits then this would not be an issue.

However; if at some point in the future water injection is implemented, the "white plume" will be even more prevailent.

I wholeheartedly support Del's suggestion that if your emmisions meet regulations and there is not any danger to the public, you need to educate the public so they know that you are in compliance, and then ignore the complainers.

A possible fix (assuming that the plume is visible water vapour only) is to pass it through a water bath. The plumet will dissappear completely.....assuming that the amount of water is large enough, a pond for example.

This is how such things are sometimes handled in Europe and the warmed water can keep some special tropical fish happy winter and summer......

Sizing is important so as not to cook the fish......

One hopes it is water vapour and not smoke....