Study on Effects of Compressor Inlet Air Cooling on GTCC System Performance Under Different Environmental Conditions

Abstract The environmental conditions (air temperature and relative humidity) have a great impact on the power and efficiency of gas turbine combined cycle (GTCC) system. Using the intake air cooling technology can greatly improve the performance of GTCC system. On the base of the PG9351FA gas turbine combined cycle system, this article builds the models of both the GTCC system and a typical lithium bromide absorption refrigeration system using Aspen Plus software. The effects of compressor inlet air cooling with different environmental conditions on the GTCC system performance are studied. The research results show that using the inlet air cooling technology can obviously increase the output powers of both the gas turbine and the combined cycle power. When the ambient humidity is low, the efficiency of GTCC changes gently; while the ambient humidity is high, the GTCC system efficiency will decline substantially when water in the air is condensed and removed with the progress of cooling process. At the same ambient temperature, when the relative humidity of the environment is equal to 20%, the gas turbine output power is increased by 35.64 MW, with an increase of 16.32%, and the combined cycle output power is increased by 39.57 MW, with an increase of 11.34%. At an ambient temperature of 35°C, for every 2.5 °C drop in the compressor inlet air, the thermal efficiency of the gas turbine increases by 0.189% compared to before cooling.