The Balance Between Secondary Air System Pressure Head Requirements, Cooling Effectiveness and Turbine Efficiency: A Parametric Study

Author(s):  
Sergio Arias Quintero ◽  
Kaylee M. Dorman ◽  
Mark Ricklick ◽  
J. Kapat

The advantage of higher turbine inlet temperatures as a way to increase cycle efficiency is potentially outweighed by the efficiency losses caused by the increased secondary air extracted from the compressor discharge to cool turbine components. Higher cooling effectiveness schemes could be used, but pressure head required to drive the coolant flow through the hot section components may be higher than those available due to combustor pressure losses. This paper looks to determine the potential effects on the overall cycle efficiency caused by an intentional pressure drop across the combustor, allowing more aggressive cooling schemes with a lower amount of cooling air, based on data of state of the art cooling schemes (coolant flow ratio, pressure head and cooling effectiveness) and a parametric analysis of a simple cycle turbine. Results suggest that coolant flow reduction can actually result in a lower pressure drop across the cooling passages, given the decreased flow velocity ending up in higher efficiency and specific work. Enhanced cooling schemes can also allow higher turbine inlet temperatures for a given coolant flow, resulting in improved performance.

Author(s):  
Ian Kennedy ◽  
Zhihang Chen ◽  
Bob Ceen ◽  
Simon Jones ◽  
Colin D. Copeland

Exhaust gases from an internal combustion engine (ICE) contain approximately 30% of the total energy released from combustion of the fuel. In order to improve fuel economy and reduce emissions, there are a number of technologies available to recover some of the otherwise wasted energy. The inverted Brayton cycle (IBC) is one such technology. The purpose of this study is to conduct a parametric experimental investigation of the IBC. The hot air from a turbocharger test facility is used. The system is sized to operate using the exhaust gases produced by a 2 l turbocharged engine at motorway cruise conditions. A number of parameters are investigated that impact the performance of the system such as turbine inlet temperature, system pressure drop, and compressor inlet temperature. The results confirm that the output power is strongly affected by the turbine inlet temperature and system pressure drop. The study also highlights the packaging and performance advantages of using an additively manufactured heat exchanger to reject the excess heat. Due to rotordynamic issues, the speed of the system was limited to 80,000 rpm rather than the target 120,000 rpm. However, the results show that the system can generate a specific work of up to 17 kJ/kg at 80,000 rpm. At full speed, it is estimated that the system can develop approximately 47 kJ/kg, which represents a thermal efficiency of approximately 5%.


Author(s):  
Ian Kennedy ◽  
Zhihang Chen ◽  
Bob Ceen ◽  
Simon Jones ◽  
Colin D. Copeland

Exhaust gases from an internal combustion engine (ICE) contain approximately 30% of the total energy released from combustion of the fuel. In order to improve fuel economy and reduce emissions, there are a number of technologies available to recover some of the otherwise wasted energy. The inverted Brayton cycle (IBC) is one such technology. The purpose of the study is to conduct a parametric experimental investigation of the IBC. Hot air from a turbocharger test facility is used. The system is sized to operate using the exhaust gases produced by a 2 litre turbocharged engine at motorway cruise conditions. A number of parameters are investigated that impact the performance of the system such as turbine inlet temperature, system pressure drop and compressor inlet temperature. The results confirm that the output power is strongly affected by the turbine inlet temperature and system pressure drop. The study also highlights the packaging and performance advantages of using a 3D printed heat exchanger to reject the excess heat. Due to rotordynamic issues, the speed of the system was limited to 80,000 rpm rather than the target 120,000 rpm. However, the results show that the system can generate a specific work of up to 17 kJ/kg at 80,000 rpm. At full speed it is estimated that the system can develop approximately 47 kJ/kg, which represents a thermal efficiency of approximately 5%.


Author(s):  
Yaping Hu ◽  
Honghu Ji

The paper numerically investigates the influences of the blowing angle α of coolant flow on the cooling effectiveness of effusion cooling of a plate. Nine cases were studied which cover three blowing angles of α = 30°, 60°, 90° and for each angle three blowing ratios of M = 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 are calculated, respectively. The results show that with the increase of α the cooling effectiveness reduces for all the calculated cases. For the cases of α = 30° and 60° the distribution of cooling effectiveness η along the whole plate are very similar for any given blowing ratio, especially when M = 1.0 and 2.0. Whereas for the cases of α = 90°, the distributions of cooling effectiveness are quite different from other two blowing angles for a given blowing ratio, especially for M = 1.0 and in the trailing region of the plate. Although the cooling effectiveness of the cases with α = 90° for any given blowing ratio is the worst one among the three angles (α = 30°, 60°, and 90°) stated, its absolute value is still quite high comparing to the conventional film cooling.


2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (16) ◽  
pp. 1650155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ebrahim Afshari ◽  
Masoud Ziaei-Rad ◽  
Nabi Jahantigh

In PEM fuel cells, during electrochemical generation of electricity more than half of the chemical energy of hydrogen is converted to heat. This heat of reactions, if not exhausted properly, would impair the performance and durability of the cell. In general, large scale PEM fuel cells are cooled by liquid water that circulates through coolant flow channels formed in bipolar plates or in dedicated cooling plates. In this paper, a numerical method has been presented to study cooling and temperature distribution of a polymer membrane fuel cell stack. The heat flux on the cooling plate is variable. A three-dimensional model of fluid flow and heat transfer in cooling plates with 15 cm × 15 cm square area is considered and the performances of four different coolant flow field designs, parallel field and serpentine fields are compared in terms of maximum surface temperature, temperature uniformity and pressure drop characteristics. By comparing the results in two cases, the constant and variable heat flux, it is observed that applying constant heat flux instead of variable heat flux which is actually occurring in the fuel cells is not an accurate assumption. The numerical results indicated that the straight flow field model has temperature uniformity index and almost the same temperature difference with the serpentine models, while its pressure drop is less than all of the serpentine models. Another important advantage of this model is the much easier design and building than the spiral models.


Author(s):  
Daniel Lo¨rstad

The main parts of the annular combustor liner walls of the Siemens gas turbine SGT-800 are convectively cooled using rib turbulated cooling. Due to the serial system of cooling and combustion air there is a potential of further reduction of total combustor pressure drop by improvements of the cooling system. Apart from the rib cooling, also the cooling channel bypass entrance is related to a significant part of the total cooling system pressure drop. In this study, an investigation is performed for a rib cooled channel which is related to the considered combustor liner and where empirical correlations are available in order to evaluate the methodology used. The study includes an assessment of the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) and Large Eddy Simulation (LES) models available within commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes and includes also an investigation of model size when using periodic boundaries for LES simulations. It is well known that a small geometrical distance in the direction of the periodic boundaries may have a strong effect on the flow field but is often neglected in practice in order to speed up LES calculations. Here the effect is assessed in order to show what size is required for accurate results, both for time averaged and transient results. In addition too small domains may be affected by spurious low frequencies originating from the periodic boundaries requiring additional simulation time for time converged statistics, but also the averages may be significantly affected. In addition the simulation period for time converged statistics is evaluated in order to show that larger model size in the periodic direction does not necessarily require longer practical simulation time, due to the fact that larger volumes may be used for the combined time and space averaging. The aim is to obtain practical guidelines for LES calculations for internal cooling flows. Then the study is extended step by step to investigate the importance due to high Reynolds number, variable fluid properties and large temperature gradients in order to cover the ranges and specifics required for SGT-800 engine conditions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Munzer S. Y. Ebaid ◽  
Qusai Z. Al-hamdan

<p class="1Body">Several modifications have been made to the simple gas turbine cycle in order to increase its thermal efficiency but within the thermal and mechanical stress constrain, the efficiency still ranges between 38 and 42%. The concept of using combined cycle power or CPP plant would be more attractive in hot countries than the combined heat and power or CHP plant. The current work deals with the performance of different configurations of the gas turbine engine operating as a part of the combined cycle power plant. The results showed that the maximum CPP cycle efficiency would be at a point for which the gas turbine cycle would have neither its maximum efficiency nor its maximum specific work output. It has been shown that supplementary heating or gas turbine reheating would decrease the CPP cycle efficiency; hence, it could only be justified at low gas turbine inlet temperatures. Also it has been shown that although gas turbine intercooling would enhance the performance of the gas turbine cycle, it would have only a slight effect on the CPP cycle performance.</p>


Author(s):  
Weilun Zhou ◽  
Qinghua Deng ◽  
Wei He ◽  
Zhenping Feng

The laminated cooling, also known as impingement-effusion cooling, is believed to be a promising gas turbine blade cooling technique. In this paper, conjugate heat transfer analysis was employed to investigate the overall cooling effectiveness and total pressure loss of the laminated cooling configuration. The pitch to film hole diameter ratio P/Df of 3, 4, 5, 6, combined with pitch to impingement hole diameter ratio P/Di of 4, 6, 8, 10, are studied at the coolant mass flux G of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 kg/(sm2bar) respectively. The results show that overall cooling effectiveness of laminated cooling configuration increases with the decreasing of P/Df and the increasing of the coolant mass flux in general. However P/Df smaller than 3 may leads to a serious blocking in first few film holes at low coolant mass flux. The large P/Di that makes the Mach number of impingement flow greater than 0.16 may cause unacceptable pressure loss. The increment of overall cooling effectiveness depends on the difference between the deterioration of external cooling and the enhancement of internal cooling. Pressure loss increases exponentially with P/Di and G, and it increases more slowly with P/Df that compared to P/Di and G. The mixing loss takes up the most pressure loss at low coolant mass flux. With the increasing of the whole pressure loss, the proportion of throttling loss and laminated loss becomes larger and finally takes up the most of the whole pressure loss. When the sum of throttling loss and laminated loss is greater than mixing loss, the increment of system pressure ratio is unreasonable that compared to the increment of overall cooling effectiveness.


Author(s):  
Hai Zhang ◽  
Qun Zheng ◽  
Mustapha Chaker ◽  
Cyrus Meher-Homji

The air pressure drop over the nozzles manifolds of inlet fogging system and the flow resistance downstream of the nozzle array (manifold) have always been an area of concern and is the object of this paper. Fogging nozzles arrays (involving several hundred nozzles) are mounted on channels and beams, downstream of the inlet filters and affect the pressure drop. The water injection angle, nozzle injection velocities and the progressive evaporation of the water droplets evaporation all influence the inlet pressure seen at the gas turbine inlet. This paper focuses on a numerical simulation investigation of flow resistance (pressure drop) of inlet fogging systems. In this research effort, the inlet duct is meshed in order to compute the pressure drop over the nozzles frames in fogging and non-fogging conditions. First, the resistance coefficients of an air intake filter are obtained by numerical and experimental methods, and then the coefficients are used for the simulation of the inlet duct by considering the filter as a porous media. Effects of nozzle spread pattern and water injection pattern are then modeled. The results indicate that injection velocity and arrangement of nozzles could have significant effects on the pressure drop and intake distortion, which will affect compressor performance. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the pressure drop and evaporation of inlet fogging and will be of value to gas turbine inlet fogging system designers and users.


1998 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 342-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. A. Jubran ◽  
M. S. Al-Haroun

This paper reports an experimental investigation to study the effects of using various designs of secondary air injection hole arrangements on the heat transfer coefficient and the pressure drop characteristics of an array of rectangular modules at different values of free-stream Reynolds numbers in the range 8 × 103 to 2 × 104. The arrangement used is either one staggered row of simple holes or one row of compound injection holes. The pitch distances between the injection holes, as well as the injection angles, were varied in both the streamwise and spanwise directions. Generally, the presence of secondary air through the injection hole arrangement can give up to 54 percent heat transfer enhancement just downstream of the injection holes. The amount of heat transfer enhancement and pressure drop across the electronic modules is very much dependent on the design of the injection holes. The simple angle injection hole arrangement tends to give a better heat transfer enhancement and less pressure drop than the compound angle holes.


1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Warner ◽  
Niranjan G. Humbad ◽  
Basem Alzahabi ◽  
Robert A. Porada

Abstract Noise from automotive air handling systems is an important issue for driver and passenger comfort. This study was undertaken to quantify the flow noise from the blower and remaining system, and to develop an analytical predictive model for airflow noise. Tests were conducted on four different vehicle Air Handling Systems (AHS) comprised of blower, heat exchangers, ducts and panel registers. Flow and noise data were measured. Test results suggest that overall noise is dominated by blower noise. A predictive model for airflow noise was developed. This model suggests system pressure drop (Δp) and system airflow (q) being dominant parameters in the noise predictions. The noise variation scales as flow velocity to the power 5.75. The developed model for flow noise can be very useful in the design process to estimate noise levels for new systems from CFD/CAE analyses.


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