Cooling steam turbines using condensating ethanol

[DonDegow]

Hello, I used to cool my steam turbines by putting them in a hydrogen filled room cooled by zigzagging pipes behind the turbine itself. It wasn't neither satisfying nor clean to me and the control over temparture was not great so it had to be colder than theoretically needed. I figured out I could use ethanol temperature range for a condensation based cooling.

The idea is quite simple, have liquid ethanol in direct contact with the turbine, cool the ceiling of the turbine room so that when ethanol boils off due to turbine heat, it evaporates, reach the cooler ceiling and condensate there, falling onto the turbine and restarting a cooling cycle.

Here's how it looks applied to a double turbine room, notice the ethanol raining on the turbines : 

 

And its plumbing : 

 

How would you improve this system?

Also, I actually have no idea what is the sweet spot of mass of ethanol needed; I did put ~100kg of ethanol per turbine and works like a charm but if min-maxing, what would be the best quantity of ethanol for cooling like this?

 

[Lilalaunekuh]

24 minutes ago, DonDegow said:

so it had to be colder than theoretically needed.

And what is the problem about a to cold turbine ?

In my current base I have 2 turbines cooled by the output of an saltwater geyser. [They don´t overheat but the keep very hot^^]

On the other hand I have an other turbine runnng at roughly -190°C.

=> The amount of cooling I have to apply to my turbines to keep them running is the same.

 

27 minutes ago, DonDegow said:

How would you improve this system?

Also, I actually have no idea what is the sweet spot of mass of ethanol needed; I did put ~100kg of ethanol per turbine and works like a charm but if min-maxing, what would be the best quantity of ethanol for cooling like this?

More ethanol will do the following:

PRO:

• Better temperature stability

CON:

• More heat will leak out to the sides

 

=> I would fill the bottom layer completly with ethanol.

[DonDegow]

Thank you for your input, my issue with having a big temperature difference between the turbine room and the heat sink is that I use ceramic tiles instead of insulation (the material), I could move to insulation but at the point I have it accessible I often built about 3 turbine rooms. It's definitely good enough but I tried to reduce the amount of heat leaking in. Also, it looks cool

I thought turbines don't work "underwater" so I tried to not submerge the whole floor.

[Lilalaunekuh]

Just now, DonDegow said:

I thought turbines don't work "underwater" so I tried to not submerge the whole floor.

I am not sure right now, but that boils my recommandation down to use as much as you can xD

[Maybe you can even abuse the different SHC of ethanol for some additional cooling^^

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/110571-the-crying-crab-cooler-non-exploit-phase-change-heat-deletion/]

[DonDegow]

Doesn't it abuse SHC difference already? If not, I don't understand how the crying crab functions diffrently than this system.

The way I think about ethanol phase change is : "Liquid is harder to heat up than gaseous, and vice-versa for cooling down. Considering this, heating up from 75°C to 81°C requires more DTU than cooling down from 81°C to 75°C" am I wrong?

[0xFADE]

Oh I thought it was going to somehow not need any active cooling. Seems like more work than passing the cooling behind them with some temp shift plates