Performance Improvement of a 43 MW Class Gas Turbine Engine with Inlet Air Cooling

In this study, a process of inlet air cooling was implemented in the intake of a land-based gas turbine engine for electricity generation. The motivation behind the study is to improve the performance of the gas turbine engine in hot climate conditions,which causes a significant decrease in the output power and an increase in specific fuel consumption. For inlet air cooling, a refrigeration cycle was attached to the turbo-shaft gas turbine engine,and power required by the refrigeration is extracted from the mechanical engine power output of the gas turbine. A 43 MWclass gas turbine engine which is similar totheGeneral Electric LM6000 engine was modeled in this study. Considering an average coefficient of performance of 3.0 for a refrigeration system, the inlet cooling provided (by supplying cooled inlet air at 15oC) a 22.21% net power increase anda5.2% power specific fuel consumption improvement at 55oCambient conditions.