The effect of elevated inlet air temperature and relative humidity on cogeneration system

The effect of elevated inlet air temperature and relative humidity on a gas turbine (GT) cogeneration system performance was investigated. The analysis was carried out on a GT of a capacity 171 MW at ISO condition, which is integrated with a dual pressure heat recovery steam generator (HRSG), the cogeneration system had been tested under Kuwait summer climate conditions. A computational model was developed and solved using engineering equation solver professional package to investigate the performance of a dual pressure GT-HRSG system. The suggested HRSG is capable of producing high-pressure superheated steam at 150 bar and 510 degrees C to operate a power generation steam turbine cycle, and a medium pressure saturated steam at 15 bar to run a thermal vapor compression (TVC) desalination system. In this research, the influence of elevated inlet air temperature and relative humidity on the energy assessment of the suggested cogeneration system was thoroughly investigated. Results indicated that operating GT under elevated values of inlet air temperatures is characterized by low values of net power and thermal efficiency. At elevated inlet air temperatures, increasing relative humidity has a small positive impact on GT cycle net power and thermal efficiency. Integrating the GT with HRSG to generate steam for power generation and process heat tends to increase energy utilization factor of the system at elevated inlet air temperatures. Increasing inlet air temperature plays a negative impact on power to heat ratio (PHR), while relative humidity has no effect on PHR. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.