Economic Assessment of Evaporative Gas Turbine Cycles With Optimized Part Flow Humidification Systems

Abstract

This study is an economic assessment of evaporative and steam-injected cycles based on three gas turbines (Trent, GTX100 and Cyclone). The evaporative cycles included part or full flow humidification and steam injection. For the Trent and GTX100, part flow cases had the lowest costs of electricity (32.6 mills/kWh and 30.9 mills/kWh, respectively), while a full flow case had the lowest cost of electricity (35.3 mills/kWh) for the Cyclone. However, the cost variations between different cycles were small: below 1% (0.4 mills/kWh) for the GTX100 and Cyclone cases and below 3% (0.9 mills/kWh) for the Trent cases. The specific investment costs were lower for part flow evaporative cycles than for full flow cycles, while steam-injected cycles had the lowest specific investment costs. The Trent and GTX100 evaporative cycles had significantly lower total and specific investment costs than combined cycles, while the costs of electricity were approximately the same.