Assessment of wet compression integrated with air-film blade cooling in gas turbine power plants
Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Elm-o-Fann University College of Science and Technology, Urmia, Iran
2 School of Mechanical Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), Tehran, Iran
3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran
Abstract
The output power, energy, and exergy efficiencies of gas turbines significantly decrease by rising ambient temperatures during the warm weather periods. The utilization of evaporative inlet cooling in gas turbine cycles increases its performance, which is extremely useful when trying to meet the increasing electrical power demands and offsetting shortages during peak load times, especially in these warm periods. With this mind the present study focuses on the thermodynamics of a gas turbine equipped with wet compression system and integrated with air-film blade cooling, to address the importance gas turbine efficiency. The results of the investigated basic and modified cycles presents that for a turbine inlet temperature of 1400 oC, an ambient temperature of 45 oC, and a relative humidity of 15%, adding an evaporative cooler to a simple gas turbine cycle leads to an approximate 21% increase in specific work, from 331 to 273.7 kJ/kg air, compared to the simple cycle. The exergy analysis indicates that the highest exergy destruction occurs in the combustion chamber, owing to the large temperature differences and the highly irreversible exothermic chemical reactions.
Keywords
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