Integration of steam injection and inlet air cooling for a gas turbine generation system

Abstract The temperature of exhaust gases from simple cycle gas turbine generation sets (GENSETs) is usually very high (around 500 °C), and a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) is often used to recover the energy from the exhaust gases and generate steam. The generated steams can be either used for many useful processes (heating, drying, separation etc.) or used back in the power generation system for enhancing power generation capacity and efficiency. Two well-proven techniques, namely steam injection gas turbine (STIG) and inlet air cooling (IAC) are very effective features that can use the generated steam to improve the power generation capacity and efficiency. Since the energy level of the generated steam needed for steam injection is different from that needed by an absorption chiller to cool the inlet air, a proper arrangement is required to implement both the STIG and the IAC features into the simple cycle GENSET. In this study, a computer code was developed to simulate a Taipower’s Frame 7B simple cycle GENSET. Under the condition of local summer weather, the benefits obtained from the system implementing both STIG and IAC features are more than a 70% boost in power and 20.4% improvement in heat rate.