Thermodynamic analysis of steam-injected gas turbine cycle power plant with inlet air cooling

Abstract

Steam-injected gas turbine cycle is the modified arrangement of simple gas turbine (GT) cycle, wherein part of steam generated in a heat recovery steam generator is injected into the combustion chamber to increase power output and the efficiency. This paper studies the effect of integration of inlet air cooling, steam injection (SI) and film cooling (FC) on the performance of GT cycle. Two different methods for cooling the inlet air, namely inlet fogging and evaporative cooling, are considered for analysis here. Results show that the inlet fogging is better than evaporative cooling to achieve the lowest temperature at the compressor inlet. Thermodynamic performance of simple GT cycle is also compared with SI in GT cycle. The present study shows that GT cycle with integration of inlet fogging, SI and FC is a better configuration for achieving higher performance.