I would like any help/ design tip on designing a thermal sleeve penetration into a steam condenser to eliminate the cracking of the weld between a high temperature pipe and condenser shell. Typical examples or a source article on the subject would be appreciated.
There is not a standard design for this. You should make sure your condenser penetration service conditions meet the HEI requirements. If you are beyond these, you should be more cautious in your design.
What you should consider is the way your nozzle dispersion device is set-up and if you are accounting for your thermal expansion in that or another way. This is a bit hard to quickly explain in a post, but that is where I would concentrate my efforts. You can always add reinforcement to your condenser shell (if needed) in this area.
You may want something with some "give" in your pipe-condenser shell attachment. If possible you could add an expansion loop external of the condenser in your high temp pipe or an expansion joint. Depending on your connection service the nozzle loads and forces can be very substantial (such as an overload steam dump nozzle).
Put at least 4ea. 90°ells in the line close to the Condenser. Standard 6-ell expansion loop;
1st looking up, 2nd left, 3rd right, then right again, 5th down, last one looking in the direction the line is running.
Is this a general question, or do you have a specific penetration in mind? If specific, what is the temperature of the steam entering the condenser through this penetration and what is the frequency of operation?
All thermal sleeves are not created equal and a large condenser can have several different versions. Most of the versions are supplier specific and I am not aware of a standard out there that they pick and choose from outside HEI. It is also my observation that they fail miserably in a lot of these. The original designers seem to have no concept of the amount of energy involved in this service.
