Compressor Performance With Water Injection

Abstract

There has been renewed interest recently in the injection of water at inlet to gas turbine plants. As is to be expected there is a drop in temperature at the inlet face to the compressor and this obviously has an effect on compressor performance. But a second effect occurs within the early stages of the compressor itself, associated with an increase in the effective specific heat due to continuing evaporation of the water droplets. Consequently there are movements away from design operating conditions on the stage characteristics. A one-dimensional analysis of compressor off-design performance is developed to illustrate these effects, which appear to be appreciable, even for very small quantities of water injection.