Steam & Gas Turbines: API 611, 612 & 616 Design

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

A turbine driver is chosen at concept stage and lived with for thirty years. Get the selection wrong and the steam balance, the plant availability and the maintenance budget all inherit the decision.

Most engineers meet turbines already installed and running, with no idea why that machine was chosen or what its operating envelope actually is.

In this course you will learn how the selection was made, how the machine performs, and what will stop it.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN TO DO

By the end of this course you will be able to:

● Select between steam and gas turbine drivers, and between condensing, back pressure and extraction configurations

● Read a steam rate figure and understand what it tells you about part load performance

● Assess gas turbine output against ambient conditions and understand the derating that follows

● Diagnose performance degradation and decide between washing, cleaning and continued operation

● Specify overspeed protection and understand the trip philosophy behind it

● Interpret API 611, 612 and 616 requirements and challenge a vendor proposal against them

● Plan a turbine start, including warm-up constraints and rotor bow avoidance

● Determine what to witness at a works test and what to accept on certificate

HOW THE COURSE IS TAUGHT

● Turbine behaviour explained from energy conversion upward, without the derivations

● Performance and degradation treated as an operating problem rather than a design curiosity

● No software needed — the methods transfer to any vendor's selection tool

● Five section quizzes and a final exam

● Every presentation is included as a downloadable PDF, so you keep the slides as a desk reference after the course

● Built around the failures that actually take turbines out: overspeed, hot section and lube oil

WHAT IS COVERED

● Where turbines beat motors as drivers, and the steam balance that often decides it

● Steam turbine fundamentals — impulse and reaction staging, velocity triangles and steam rate

● Condensing, back pressure and extraction configurations and their plant implications

● Gas turbine fundamentals — compressor, combustor and turbine sections

● Single shaft against two shaft, and aeroderivative against heavy duty industrial

● Performance across load, and the Willans line as a practical tool

● Ambient temperature, pressure and humidity effects, and inlet air cooling

● Degradation, compressor fouling, washing and the economics of recovery

● Rotor, blading, casing, bearings, seals and gland systems

● Gas turbine hot section — combustor, cooling, materials and inspection intervals

● Governing, speed control and the interface with the driven machine

● Overspeed protection, trip testing and the incidents that shaped current practice

● Lubrication, control oil and the auxiliary failures that trip the machine

● API 611, 612 and 616 requirements, testing, commissioning and overhaul

WHO THIS IS FOR

● Rotating equipment engineers responsible for turbine-driven trains

● Process and utilities engineers whose steam balance depends on turbine selection

● Operations engineers running turbine-driven compressors, pumps and generators

● Maintenance engineers planning turbine inspection and overhaul

● Project engineers specifying drivers and reviewing vendor proposals

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR

I am a Chartered Engineer (CEng MIMechE) with over fifteen years in oil and gas, energy and industrial infrastructure, across a range of projects and disciplines.

For more than five years I have also been teaching. Close to twenty thousand engineers have taken my courses, which hold an average rating of 4.26 across the catalogue.

I build these courses because I am genuinely interested in how engineering works and why it fails, and because most technical subjects are taught far worse than they need to be. My aim every time is to produce the course I would have wanted when I first met the subject — practical, honest about what actually matters, and free of the padding that wastes your time.

REQUIREMENTS

No prior turbine experience is required — energy conversion and staging are built from first principles. Any engineering or technical background is enough to follow it.

START NOW

Enrol today and work through it at your own pace, with every presentation available as a downloadable PDF, lifetime access and every future update included.