Analysis of Evaporative Cooling of Inlet Air Influence on Gas Turbine Cycle Performance

Abstract

This paper studies the influence of evaporative cooling air conditioning for a gas turbine. Evaporative cooling makes sure of the evaporation of water to reduce the inlet air temperature of the compressor. The model used for the evaporative cooler panels is based on the energy balance of ambient air and cooling water. Inlet air cooling increases the power output by taking advantage of the gas turbine’s feature of higher mass flow rate, due to compressor inlet air temperature decays. As the specific volume of air is directly proportional to the temperature, the increases in the air density result in a higher air mass flow rate, once the volumetric rate is constant. The effects of the parameter (design and operation condition) on the power output, compression work, specific fuel consumption, and thermal efficiency are evaluated and compared with simple gas turbine cycle. Simple gas turbine cycle when precooled its specific work output and efficiency increases as precooling reduces the load on the compressor. But this effect becomes more pronounced when different configurations are used, i.e., when it is required to enhance the specific work output of the cycle reheating is added to the simple cycle and when the exhaust gas of the turbine is used to increase the temperature of the compressed air, i.e., regeneration, it will increase the efficiency of the precooled cycle compared to simple and reheated cycle. Again the effect of intercooling is to increase the specific work output further. Thus, the best possible configuration through which gas turbine performance can be enhanced is intercooling and reheating combined with regeneration.