Qualifying combustion turbines for inlet air cooling capacity enhancement

Abstract

The relative potential of combustion turbines for capacity enhancement by inlet air cooling was examined. A new inlet air cooling effectiveness factor was developed for this purpose. It was found that combustion turbines vary significantly in terms of inlet air cooling effectiveness. Of the combustion turbines presented in this paper, the best-ranked combustion turbine had an effectiveness factor of 0.48 while the lowest-ranked turbine had a factor of 1.35. No strong correlation was found between the inlet air cooling effectiveness factor and the ISO turbine performance parameters of heat rate, pressure ratio, exhaust temperature, and the ratio of inlet air mass flow rate to power output.