Accelerated cooling of a gas turbine

Abstract

In a method for the fast cooling down of a gas turbine (1) after its operation, and also in a gas turbine (1) useful for carrying out the method, subsequent to the operation of a gas turbine (1), the rotor (8) is operated at low cooling speed (n) in order to cool down the gas turbine (1) which is heated up as a result of operation. This allows service or maintenance operations to be started early and therefore to reduce the shutdown periods of a gas turbine (1). After the operation of the gas turbine (1), cooling is not carried out a constant low cooling speed (n), but the cooling speed (n) is controlled as a function of at least one critical temperature (Tk) and/or of time (t). The cooling speed (n) in this case, in dependence upon the critical temperature (Tk), is kept as high as the resulting thermal and/or cyclic load allows for realizing a fast cool-down.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.