Title: Gas turbine performance enhancement by intake air cooling

Authors: Hussain Al-Madani

Addresses: College of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Bahrain, Bahrain

Abstract: In this work, the influence of air cooling intake on the gas turbine performance is presented. The proposed system, together with the gas turbine, is described. A mathematical model of ACIGT (Air Cooling Intake Gas Turbine) is derived and formulated in dimensionless form from which the constraint multivariable optimisation problem was formulated. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a numerical simulation of the optimisation problem is presented. The maximum net power is obtained using graphical visualisation as well as numerical computation. The obtained results show that the net power could be increased up to 35% for the operating ranges of the ratio of the compressor air inlet temperature to the ambient air temperature, pressure ratio and the ratio of the turbine air inlet temperature to the ambient air temperature which demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach.

Keywords: gas turbines; intake air cooling; performance measurement; performance enhancement; mathematical modelling; simulation; maximum net power; visualisation; Bahrain.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEX.2006.009043

International Journal of Exergy, 2006 Vol.3 No.2, pp.164 - 173

Published online: 19 Feb 2006 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article