GT2012-68822 THERMODYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF A STEAM INJECTED AND RECUPERATED GAS TURBINE AIR COMPRESSOR

Compressed air and steam are perhaps the most significant industrial utilities after electricity, gas and water, and are re-sponsible for a significant proportion of global energy consump-tion. Microturbine technology, in the form of a Gas Turbine Air Compressor (GTAC), offers a promising alternative to tra-ditional, electrically driven air compressors providing low vi-bration, a compact size, reduced electrical consumption and po-tentially reduced greenhouse gas emissions. With high exhaust temperatures, gas turbines are well suited to the cogeneration of steam. The compressed air performance can be further increased by injecting some of that cogenerated steam or by conventional recuperation. This paper presents a thermodynamic analysis of various forms of the GTAC cycle incorporating steam cogeneration, steam injection (STIGTAC) and recuperation. The addition of cogeneration leads to improved energy utilisation, while steam injection leads to a significant boost in both the compressed air delivery and efficiency. As expected, for a low pressure ratio device, recuperating the GTAC leads to a significant increase in efficiency. The combination of steam injection and recuper-ation forms a recuperated STIGTAC with increased compressed air performance over the unrecuperated STIGTAC at the expense of reduced steam production. Finally, an analysis using a simpli-∗Address all correspondence to this author fied model of the STIGTAC demonstrates a significant reduction in CO2 emissions, when compared to an equivalent air compres-sor driven by primarily coal-based electricity and a natural gas fired boiler. NOMENCLATURE a,c,d,e Number of mol CMF Corrected mass flow rate EGT Evaporative gas turbine GTAC Gas turbine air compressor H Enthalpy h Specific enthalp