How You Can Improve Gas Turbine Efficiency?

Despite the fact that gas turbine performance is inferior to that of diesel and gasoline engine power plants, a basic gas turbine provides weight, size, and vibration advantages over an engine, as well as size and cost advantages over a small steam plant. It also outperforms both in terms of water use, as the simple gas turbine plant consumes virtually little cooling water.

The efficiency and specific output of the simple gas turbine cycle are rather poor, even if the components used in gas turbine power plants are upgraded in design. The efficiency disadvantage can be overcome but at the cost of increasing the complexity of the gas turbine system. In this blog post, we’ll look at some of the aspects that influence a gas turbine’s performance.

Is it important to increase gas turbine performance?

Gas turbine performance is crucial, especially now that oil prices are volatile and power consumption is on the rise. In the summer, for example, the demand for power generation fuel in Saudi Arabia can approach 400,000 barrels per day. In such a heated atmosphere, the problem becomes much more complicated because turbine power output decreases as the ambient temperature rises, among other variables, as mentioned below. Let’s take a look at all of the variables that can affect the final performance and, as a result, reduce energy output and increase costs.

How You Can Improve Gas Turbine Efficiency?

• Temperature

Because a turbine runs on air, everything that alters the mass flow or density of the air has an impact on its performance. The temperature of the environment has an impact on a variety of operation characteristics, including heat consumption, output, and heat rate.

Consider the following formula for the mass flow rate of an ideal gas to see how it affects a GT:

m= P1V1 / RT1

Because the gas turbine is a volumetric machine, the air volume rate (V 1) is constant. The power output, on the other hand, is proportional to the air mass flow (m). According to the previous formula, as the turbine’s input air temperature rises, the air mass flow (m) decreases, and the turbine’s capacity falls. The same is true for efficiency: when the temperature rises, the efficiency decreases, and vice versa.

• Relative humidity

Offshore platforms and other high-humidity environments favor gas turbines. These machines can also be found in dry environments, usually with inlet coolers. The air is humid in both instances, which may influence overall performance. The influence of humidity on turbine performance was assumed to be minor decades ago, according to specialists at the time. Because gas turbines are larger, the effect is now more powerful.

• Losses

It doesn’t matter which gas turbine design you use: as long as chillers, silencers, air filtration, evaporative coolers, and all the other components are included, there will always be system losses. The following are some of the most typical causes of power output loss:

• Too much space between the blades and the housing
• Turbine blades that have been damaged
• Filters in the input air supply are clogged.
• Compressor failure

• Fuel type

Have you heard the popular belief that a gas turbine can run on any gas? Gas turbines are available for a variety of gases, including refinery gases, steelworks gases, natural gas, and syngas. The truth is that each turbine configuration and design can only function at peak efficiency within a set of parameters.

Gas heat energy, mass flow, and temperature difference are all factors in GT work. The type of fuel has an impact on both mass flow and heat energy. The fact that different fuels produce varied outputs is fascinating. Natural gas, for example, is about 2% more productive than distillate oil. This is due to the higher specific heat of the components in methane.

In summary, the following are the primary qualities of fuel that may affect turbine performance:

• Flammability
• Heat content.
• Delay time for auto-ignition.
• Temperature control for automatic ignition
• The temperature of a stoichiometric flame

Inlet Air Cooling (IAC): The best way to boost turbine output

One of the most common ways to improve performance is to lower the temperature of the input air. Evaporative cooling, fogging, and chilling are the three basic solutions in this area, each of which is appropriate for distinct situations.

Other Ways to Improve the Performance of Gas Turbines

• Cleaning and maintaining the inlet filter

Due to damage and blockage on the compressor blades, dirty and badly maintained filters could result in a significant loss of efficiency. Filters that are unclean intake cause pressure drop. Regular inspections and cleaning of the component might help to keep the Gas turbine in good working order.

• The compressor is being cleaned

This is a difficult yet crucial workout for your GT’s overall health. Industrial gas turbines are typically used in less-than-ideal conditions. Their compressor blades will inevitably collect dirt over time. Allow a professional to advise you on whether to clean the compressor online or offline.

• The Gas Turbine Control System

The gas turbine control system is basically an electronic system for analyzing and ensuring safety and decreasing unexpected downtime of turbines. The gas turbine control system can increase GT efficiency by indirectly assisting the engineers to foresee hazards and unexpected failures. IS200STAIH2A and IS220PPROH1A are examples of GE turbine control components.

Summary

The overall fuel efficiency of gas turbine plants can be increased in many ways through attentive operation – albeit through quite small increments. However, fresh plant generations may be required for even higher advances. It’s clear to raise gas operating temperatures even higher, but this can only be done with very specialized, and usually very expensive, hot path components. Single crystal and other unusual alloys for blading, as well as advanced ceramics, will be required, but would plant owners be willing to pay for them?

This is highly dependent on how critical it becomes to lower exhaust emissions even more. For example, if you build a hybrid gas combined gas turbine-Rankine cycle power. The employment of a gas turbine with an organic fluid Rankine bottoming cycle and an inter-cycle regenerator working between the superheated vapor exiting the Rankine turbine and the compressor incoming air would result in increased part-load efficiency. When the engine’s power went below the maximum rated power, the regenerator would kick in.