Abstract
Humid air turbines have previously demonstrated the potential to deliver high efficiency and power output combined with low emissions. This paper investigates the part-load performance of a 40 MW class advanced humid air turbine for power generation applications across a range of operating conditions. The paper investigates the impact of the main burner and reheater burner on the system’s part-load power output and thermal efficiency and provides insights into the behavior of the key modules across the power spectrum of operation including the saturator tower which was never reported previously. The impact of the ambient air and sea water temperature on the cycle’s performance are also investigated. The outcome of the research shows that the thermal efficiency if the system is less than 0.26% penalized when operating down to 50% of the design power output. Sea water temperature was found to have a more notable impact than ambient air temperature on both power output and thermal efficiency Overall, this work constitutes a step ahead in understanding the potential benefits of an advanced humid air turbine system for power generation applications across a range of operating conditions which is not previously shown.
Highlights
Humid air turbine (HAT) systems are among the most efficient gas turbine based thermal cycles as highlighted by Jonsson and Yan in [1]
Wei et al [15] conducted an experimental investigation on the off-design performance of a small-sized HAT cycle to conclude that the thermal efficiency increased by 3.1% compared to a simple cycle configuration
This paper presents a methodology for the modelling and simulation of the steady state part-load performance of a 40 MW reheated HAT cycle across a range of operating conditions
Summary
Humid air turbine (HAT) systems are among the most efficient gas turbine based thermal cycles as highlighted by Jonsson and Yan in [1]. The influence of the ambient temperature on the off-design performance of the cycle was studied by Wang et al [13] and Kim et al [14] concluding that the cycle is less sensitive to ambient temperature variations than simple gas turbine cycles. Both works investigated the impact of the ambient temperature but since a closed water loop was assumed the impact of the water temperature was never considered. The off-design performance of the saturator tower was previously studied experimentally by Pedemonte et al [17,18], whereas a methodology for the Nomenclature
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