New turbine enables 13 per cent gain in power generation

WEG’s Group company TGM — a leading Brazilian provider of equipment for power generator drivers, has replaced a steam turbine with a superior model at Balbo Group company Usina Santo Antônia in Sertãozinho, Brazil.

The plant has a milling capacity of three million tons of sugarcane per harvest, with a flexible industrial plant for the production of crystal sugar, anhydrous and hydrated ethanol, yeast and electricity.

Santo Antônio has acquired a multi-stage TGM turbine model BT 40 (reaction technology) to drive an energy generator, aiming at replacing the TME 25000A turbine (impulse technology), installed in 2002. The new equipment allows at 13 per cent gain in power generation using the same amount of steam, which supplies internal consumption and enables export to the rest to the grid.

The Balbo Group was the first sugar-energy company responsible for the acquisition of a high-pressure and temperature turbine from TGM, focusing on large-scale generation and export of electricity. The company carried out this upgrade to more efficient equipment, maintaining the WEG generator of 29.6 MVA and changing only the power factor.

The TGM steam turbine model BT 40, can operate at a maximum power of 40 MW and operates at up to 140 bar (a) of pressure and 540 degrees Celsius of temperature.

The new equipment commenced operation in the 2020 harvest, and its installation represented an additional power generation at the plant of approximately 18,000 MW per harvest, achieving the expected short-term economic result.

As an additional service, modernisation of the turbine safety and control systems was also carried out, fully integrated with the generator’s protection, excitation and synchronisation system. The old systems installed in 2002 presented many availability risks due to the obsolescence of various equipment, so with this upgrade, the plant now has state of the art equipment, in addition to mitigating any risk of unwanted shutdowns.

“The TGM reaction turbine is a high efficiency machine and was a very important acquisition for the success of our project,” said José Marcos de Oliveira - Industrial Manager of Usina Santo Antônio.

Another highlight in this project was the excellent interaction between TGM and Usina Santo Antônio engineering teams, which were aiming to replace the existing equipment with minimum alteration to the civil base, since there were dimensional differences between the equipment.

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