Steam plays a large role in power generation, and you’ll find Clayton Steam Generators in power plants around the world. Fossil fuel plants, as well as nuclear power plants, use steam to drive generationers and produce electricity. In traditional utility boiler plants, auxiliary steam can also be used for heating or to preheat the deaerator or steam system piping.
A unique niche for steam use in a gas turbine plant is for NOx reduction. A small amount of super-heated steam can be injected into the gas turbine, which will reduce the combustion temperature and the formation of NOx. This can be an effective method to reduce emissions of older gas turbine plants that are faced with new more stringent local air pollution regulations.
Another use is in gas turbine, combined cycle power plants, where auxiliary super-heated steam is beneficial to seal the glands of the steam turbine right at start-up. By using auxiliary steam for gland sealing, a combine cycle power plant can synchronize its generators to come fully online 45-60 minutes faster resulting in massive savings at every start.
Clayton Steam Generators producing saturated or super-heated steam can go from a cold start to full output in under 10 minutes, which is a huge advantage for single cycle gas turbine plants that need to reduce emission, or for combined cycle plants that handle peak demand with frequent start-ups. No other boiler can produce super-heated steam as fast as Clayton.