Enhancement of performance of gas turbine engines by inlet air cooling and cogeneration system

It is known that the efficiency of the gas turbine engine is relatively low at design point and it deteriorates further at part load and at off-design high ambient temperatures. Therefore, this work comprises the study of adding an inlet air precooler connected to the evaporator of an aqua-ammonia absorption chiller which is driven by the tail-end heat recovered from the engine exhaust gases. A heat recovery boiler is used to partly recover the exhaust heat before entering the generator of the chiller. The performance of this combined system, namely power, efficiency (eta) and specific fuel consumption (sfc) is studied and compared with the simple cycle. The variables in this parametric study are mainly compressor pressure ratio (r(c)), turbine inlet temperature (T-03) and ambient temperature (T-a). Results show that the combined system achieves gains in power, eta(ov) and sfc(ov) of about 21.5, 38 and 27.7%. The performance of the combined system shows less sensitivity to variations in operating variables. Thermoeconomic evaluation shows that the combined system is viable.