Abstract
A new humid air turbine cycle that uses low‐ or medium‐temperature solar energy as assistant heat source was proposed for increasing the mass flow rate of humid air. Based on the combination of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, this paper described and compared the performances of the conventional and the solar HAT cycles. The effects of some parameters such as pressure ratio, turbine inlet temperature (TIT), and sollar collector efficiency on humidity, specific work, cycle′s exergy efficiency, and solar energy to electricity efficiency were discussed in detail. Compared with the conventional HAT cycle, because of the increased humid air mass flow rate in the new system, the humidity and the specific work of the new system were increased. Meanwhile, the solar energy to electricity efficiency was greatly improved. Additionally, the exergy losses of components in the system under the given conditions were also studied and analyzed.
Highlights
In recent years, the solar energy as a kind of clean and renewable energy is applied in many areas
Owing to the increase of steam in the exhaust gas carrying off a part of energy, the proportion of exhaust exergy loss in the solar humid air turbine (HAT) cycle is increased to 17.68% compared to the conventional HAT of 15.22%
According to the obtained results from the thermodynamic analysis of the solar HAT and the conventional HAT, they show that some performance parameters increase greatly by utilizing the solar energy, such as humidity, the cycle’s specific work, and the solar energy to electricity efficiency
Summary
The solar energy as a kind of clean and renewable energy is applied in many areas. More and more countries pay attentions to researching and developing solar energy and gradually extend the tremendous scale power generation. The way of solar energy utilization by heating water into steam through solar collector for gas turbine has developed successfully in test and technology. Rao and Samuelsen presented an HAT cycle integrated with a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) with a high thermal efficiency of 69.1%. Many researchers have proposed the concepts of graded use of energy for improving the performance of HAT cycle [9,10,11,12,13,14]. A new mode of HAT cycle that integrated with solar energy is proposed. We use the exergy analysis method to discuss and investigate some factors influencing on the performance of HAT cycle
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