The Impact of Atmospheric Conditions on Gas Turbine Performance.(Dept.M)

Abstract

In a hot summer climate, as in Kuwait and other Arabian Gulf countries, the performance of a gas turbine deteriorates drastically during the high temperature hours(reaches up to 60 oC IN Kuwait). This occurs when the power demand is the largest. This necessitates the increase of the gas turbine installed capacities to balance this deterioration Gas turbines users are becoming aware of this problem as they depend more or gas turbines to satisfy their needs of power and process heat for desalination due to the recent circuit and economical development of the gas turbines. This paper is devoted to study the impact of atmospheric conditions, such as ambient temperature, pressure, and relative humidity on gas turbine performance, The reason for considering the air pressures different than standard atmospheric pressure of the compressor inlet is the variation of this pressure with the altitude. This can generalize the results of this study to include the cases flights at high altitudes. A fully interactive computer programme based on the derived governing equations is developed. The effects of typical variations of atmospheric conditions on the power output and efficiency are considered. These include ambient temperature (range from 20 to 60oC), altitude (range from zero to 2000 m above sea level) and relative humidity (range from zero to 100%). The thermal efficiency and specific net work of a gas turbine were calculated at different values of maximum turbine inlet temperature (TIT) AND VARIABLE ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS. The value of TIT is a design factor which depends on the material specifications and the fuel air ratio. Typical operating values of (TIT) in modern gas turbines were chosen for this study 1000, 1200.1400 and 1600 K. Partial loads were also considered in the analysis as well as full load. Finally the calculated results were compared with the actual gas turbine data supplied by manufacturers.