Evaluation of the cooling flow rate of the cooled steam turbine for a novel H₂/O₂ cycle

Abstract

In recent years, with the global low-carbon development, hydrogen as a clean fuel for the industry has attracted the interest of many research institutions all over the world. The potential of hydrogen energy in energy transformation has been paid attention to again. In the power generation industry, using hydrogen as gas turbine fuel is likely to play an important role in achieving carbon neutrality. At design stage, it is necessary to perform a preliminary evaluation of the performance of the novel hydrogen-fueled cycle with a few (or even without) experimental data. It is sure that secondary cooling systems have a significant impact on it. In this paper, a methodology is adopted for the cooling of hydrogen-fueled gas turbine. It is based on mass/energy balances and heat transfer correlations. The aim is to evaluate the turbine efficiency and cooling flow requirements of the novel hydrogen-fueled cycle. When both the working fluid and coolant are steam, the cooling flow rate is less. Preliminary results for the novel H₂/O₂ cycle turbine show that part of the stages need to be cooled and the film cooling effectiveness is less.