Parametric Investigation of Basic and Evaporative Inlet Air-Cooled Gas Turbine Cycle

The present paper is an investigation of the effects of different operating parameters on the performance of the basic and inlet-air cooled gas turbine gas cycle. The cooling technique adopted for inlet air is evaporative cooling. Thermal efficiency, work output, compressor work has been chosen as some output parameters while turbine-inlet-temperature, pressure ratio, and ambient temperature are the input variables. The results have been plotted in terms of meaningful graphs. The study reveals that as TIT and pressure ratio is increased, thermal efficiency and net-work output increases and the evaporative cycle has a higher efficiency (variance ~1–2.5%) in comparison to the basic cycle. Also, thermal efficiency was observed to be higher at lower ambient temperature values i.e. nearly 288.15 K, and lowers as the ambient temperature is increased. The highest gas turbine net-work output for inlet air evaporative cooling technique has been observed to be 224.80 kJ/kg of air (rpc = 8, TIT = 1100 K) as well as the highest gas turbine efficiency is found to be ~46% (rpc = 16 and TIT = 1100 K).