Power Generation

Non-contact Displacement & Gap Sensing for Power Generation

PowerGen is a major market for Capacitec’s non-contact displacement and gap sensor systems. Our US European and Japanese customers build and rebuild Nuclear, Gas, Coal and Wind power turbines and generators as well as heat exchangers, nuclear fuel rods and solar panel manufacturing and test equipment. For 25+ years we have worked closely with manufacturing and quality engineers as well as R&D to enhance their product designs and production and quality control methods. Often we have replaced mechanical measurement tools such as feeler gauges, wand mounted feeler gauges and go/no gauges with electronic alternatives. For example:

  • 2HPB and HPS Industrial Non Contact Wands provide a high accuracy non-contact digital replacement to feeler gages for measuring gaps in PowerGen applications.
  • Spring Contact Gap Sensor Wands provide and alternative gap measurement tool when measuring gaps where one or both of the target surfaces are non conductive such as measuring turbine rotor blade to metal seals
  • Capacitec Amplifiers combined with Bargrafx™ data acquisition software linearizes gap measurement outputs while offering simultaneous display of multiple gap data points on one screen. This LabView® based system is used for simultaneous measurements of 5 rotor to stator gaps in a steam turbine to confirm the turbine eccentricity after re-build.

 

Gap Measurement Systems for Nuclear Fuel Rod Bundle Gaps

  • Gap measurement system replacing strain gauge wands in robotic fuel rod assemblies for Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) and Boiling Water Reactors (BWR)

 

Gap Measurement in Gas and Steam Turbines

  • Turbine blade to outer casing gap measurement
  • Rotor to Stator gap measurement
  • Simultaneous measurements of 5 points rotor to stator gaps in a steam turbine to confirm the turbine eccentricity after re-build.
  • Maintaining uniform gaps between heat exchanger tubes on nuclear steam turbine heat exchanger

 

Gap & Parallelism Measurement in Photovoltaic Applications

  • Gap/parallelism of CVD coater head to metal roller
  • Control Slot Die Coater Gap for liquid coating
  • Gap/parallelism of Slot Die coater head to media
  • Gap/parallelism between rollers for lamination and other PV cell and module roller applications
  • 800°C proximity sensor for absence/ presence of panels in a vacuum furnace

 

Gap Measurements in Wind Turbines Applications

  • Condition Monitoring System with real time measurement of rotor stator gap during operation to prevent catastrophic failures.
  • Gap measurement between cogwheel teeth in pitch control and other actuators
  • Emergency Disc brake rotor to brake pad gap set up
  • Nacelle to tower parallelism