The Impact of Atmospheric Conditions on Gas Turbine Performance

Abstract

In a hot summer climate, as in Kuwait and other Arabian Gulf countries, the performance of a gas turbine deteriorates drastically during the high-temperature hours (up to 60°C in Kuwait). Power demand is the highest at these times. This necessitates an increase in installed gas turbine capacities to balance this deterioration. Gas turbines users are becoming aware of this problem as they depend more on gas turbines to satisfy their power needs and process heat for desalination due to the recent technical and economical development of gas turbines. This paper is devoted to studying the impact of atmospheric conditions, such as ambient temperature, pressure, and relative humidity on gas turbine performance. The reason for considering air pressures different from standard atmospheric pressure at the compressor inlet is the variation of this pressure with altitude. The results of this study can be generalized to include the cases of flights at high altitudes. A fully interactive computer program based on the derived governing equations is developed. The effects of typical variations of atmospheric conditions on power output and efficiency are considered. These include ambient temperature (range from −20 to 60°C), altitude (range from zero to 2000 m above sea level), and relative humidity (range from zero to 100 percent). The thermal efficiency and specific net work of a gas turbine were calculated at different values of maximum turbine inlet temperature (TIT) and variable environmental conditions. The value of TIT is a design factor that depends on the material specifications and the fuel/air ratio. Typical operating values of TIT in modern gas turbines were chosen for this study: 1000, 1200, 1400, and 1600 K. Both partial and full loads were considered in the analysis. Finally the calculated results were compared with actual gas turbine data supplied by manufacturers.