Abstract

In this study the effect of inlet air cooling system and components irreversibilities on the performance of an active 25MW gas turbine power plant was investigated. The objective of this study was to establish the potential benefits of improving the performance of the current gas turbine plant into a more advanced cycle with high efficiency and power output through inlet air cooling. Problem statement: The hypothesis was that the low performance of the gas turbine plant was caused by high ambient temperature, the use of spray cooler was adopted to bring the air condition temperature close to ISO condition. Approach: In this study, performance characteristics were determined for a set of actual operational conditions including ambient temperature, relative humidity, turbine inlet temperature and pressure ratio. Results: The results obtained show that the use of a spray cooler on the existing gas turbine cycle gives a better thermal efficiency and less irreversibility rate in the components system and the entire plant. The power output of the gas turbine plant with spray cooler was found to have increased by over 7%, accompanied by 2.7% increase in machine efficiency with a reduction in specific fuel consumption of 2.05 and 10.03% increase in the energy of exhaust. Furthemore, a 0.32% reduction in the total irreversibility rate of the plant for the cooled cycle was obtained and a 0.39, 0.29 and 0.17% reduction in the irreversibility rate of compressor, turbine and combustion chamber respectively, were also obtained. Conclusion: The results show that retrofitting the existing gas turbine plant with inlet air cooling system gives a better system performance and may prove to be an attractive investment opportunity.

Highlights

  • Gas turbines are widely used for electricity generation in most countries of the world

  • The low efficiencies of the gas turbine plants are tired to many factors which include: operation mode, poor maintenance procedures, age of plant, discrinpancies in operating data, high ambient temperature and relative humidity

  • Research has shown that gas turbine power output decreases by 18% for a 10°C increase in compressor inlet air temperature (Cortes and William, 2003)

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Gas turbines are widely used for electricity generation in most countries of the world. Power output and efficiency of a gas turbine plant depends largely on the condition of the compressor inlet air temperature (Cortes and William, 2003). Turbine: The irreversibility rate in the turbine is obtained as in Eq 22:

MATERIALS AND METHODS
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