Improvement of Gas Turbine Performance Using LNG Cold Energy

액화천연가스의 냉열을 이용한 가스터빈의 성능향상

This work describes analysis on the effect of inlet air cooling by the cold energy of liquefied natural gas(LNG) on the performance of gas turbines. Gas turbine off-design analysis program to simulate the influence of compressor inlet temperature variation is prepared and an inlet air cooler is modeled. It is shown that the degree of power augmentation is much affected by the humidity of inlet air. If the humidity is low enough, that is the water content of the air does not condense, the temperature drop amounts to $18^{\circ}C$, which corresponds to more than 12% power increase, in case of a $1350^{\circ}C$ class gas turbine with methane as the fuel. Even with 60% humidity, about 8% power increase is possible. It is found that even though the fuel contains as much as 20% ethane in addition to methane, the power improvement does not change considerably. It is observed that if the humidity is not too high, the current system is feasible oven with conceivable air pressure loss at the inlet air cooler.