With the transition to more use of renewable forms of energy in Europe, grid instability that is linked to the intermittency in power generation is a concern, and thus, the fast response of on-demand power systems like gas turbines has become more important. This study focuses on the injection of compressed air to facilitate the improvement in the ramp-up rate of a heavy-duty gas turbine. The steady-state analysis of compressed airflow injection at part-load and full load indicates power augmentation of up to 25%, without infringing on the surge margin. The surge margin is also seen to be more limiting at part-load with maximum closing of the variable inlet guide vane than at high load with a maximum opening. Nevertheless, the percentage increase in the thermal efficiency of the former is slightly greater for the same amount of airflow injection. Part-load operations above 75% of power show higher thermal efficiencies with airflow injection when compared with other load variation approaches. The quasi-dynamic simulations performed using constant mass flow method show that the heavy-duty gas turbine ramp-up rate can be improved by 10% on average, for every 2% of compressor outlet airflow injected during ramp-up irrespective of the starting load. It also shows that the limitation of the ramp-up rate improvement is dominated by the rear stages and at lower variable inlet guide vane openings. The turbine entry temperature is found to be another restrictive factor at a high injection rate of up to 10%. However, the 2% injection rate is shown to be the safest, also offering considerable performance enhancements. It was also found that the ramp-up rate with air injection from the minimum environmental load to full load amounted to lower total fuel consumption than the design case.

The impact of compressor fouling on civil aero engines unlike the industrial stationary application has not been widely investigated or available in open literature. There are questions about the impact of fouling for short-and long-haul missions comparatively, given their unique operational requirements and market. The aim of this study is to quantify the effects of different levels of fouling degradation on the fan, for two different aircraft with different two-spool engine models for their respective typical missions. Firstly, the study shows the increase in turbine entry temperature for both aircraft engines, to maintain the same level of thrust as their clean condition. The highest penalty observed is during takeoff and climb, when the thrust setting is the highest. Despite take-off and climb segment being a larger proportion in the short-haul mission compared to the long-haul mission, the percentage increase in fuel burn due to fouling are similar, except in the worst case fouling level were the former is higher by 0.8% points. In addition to this, for all the cases, the additional fuel burn due to fouling and its cost is shown to be small. Likewise, the increase in turbine entry temperature for both missions at take-off are similar, except in the worst case fouling level for the short-haul mission were the turbine entry temperature is 7 K higher than the corresponding long-haul mission for the same level of degradation. The study infers that the penalty due to rise in temperature is of more concern than the additional fuel burn. Hence the blade technology (cooling and material) and engine thrust rating are key factors in determining the extent to which blade fouling would affect aero engine performance in short-and long-haul missions.

Inlet filtration systems are designed to protect industrial gas turbines from air borne par ticles and foreign objects, thereby improving the quality of air for combustion and reduc ing component fouling. Filtration systems are of varying grades and capture efficiencies, with the higher efficiency systems filters providing better protection but higher pressure losses. For the first time, two gas turbine engine models of different configurations and capacities have been investigated for two modes of operation (constant turbine entry tem perature (TET) and load!power) for a two-and three-stage filter system. The main pur pose o f this is to present an account on factors that could decide the selection of filtration systems by gas turbine operators, solely based on performance. The result demonstrates that the two-spool engine is only slightly more sensitive to intake pressure loss relative to the single-spool. This is attributed to higher pressure ratio of the two-spool as well as the deceleration of the high pressure compressor (HPC)lhigh pressure turbine (HPT) shaft rotational speed in a constant TET operation. The compressor of the single-spool engine and the low pressure compressor (LPC) of the two-spool shows similar behavior: slight increase in pressure ratio and reduced surge margin at their constant rotational speed operation. Loss in shaft power is observed for both engines, about 2.5% at 1000 Pa loss. For constant power operation there is an increase in fuel flow and TET, and as a result the creep life was estimated. The result obtained indicates earlier operating hours to fail ure for the three-stage system over the two-stage by only a few thousand hours. However, this excludes any degradation due to fouling that is expected to be more significant in the two-stage system.

The fact that most renewable forms of energy are not available on-demand and are typically characterised by intermittent generation currently makes gas turbine engines an important source of back-up power. This study focuses on one of the capabilities that ensure that gas turbines are more flexible on the electric power grid. The capability here is the minimum environmental load that makes it possible to keep a gas turbine engine on the grid without a shut-down, to offer grid stability, adding inertia to the grid in periods when there is no demand for peak power from the engine. It is then desirable to operate the engine at the lowest possible load, without infringing on carbon monoxide emissions that becomes dominant. This paper demonstrates this potential through the extraction of the pressurised air from the back end of the compressor into an assumed energy storage system. The simulation of the engine performance using an in-house tool shows the additional reduction of the power output when the maximum closing of variable inlet guide vane is complemented with air extractions. However, the identified key strategy for achieving a lower environmental load (with same carbon monoxide emission limit) is to always maintain the design flame temperature. This is contrary to the conventional approach that involves a decrease in such temperatures. Here, a 34% reduction in load was achieved with 24% of flow extraction. This is shown to vary with ambient temperatures, in favour of lower temperatures when the combustor inlet pressures are higher. The emission models applied were based on empirical correlations and shows that higher combustor inlet pressures, high but constant flame temperatures with core flow reduction is crucial to obtaining a low environmentally compliant load. The compressor analysis shows that choking is a noticeable effect at a higher rate of extractions; this is found to occur at the stages closest to the extraction location.

Gas turbine (GT) operators are often met with the challenge of utilizing and making meaning of the vast measurement data collected from machine sensors during operation. This can easily be about 576 × 106 data points of gas path measurements for one machine in a base load operation in a year, if the width of the data is 20 columns of measured and calculated parameters. This study focuses on the utilization of large data in the context of quantifying the degradation that is mostly related to compressor fouling, in addition to investigations on the impact of offline and online compressor washing. To achieve this, four GT engines operating for about 3.5 years with 51 offline washes and 1184 occasions of online washes were examined. This investigation includes different wash frequencies, liquid concentrations, and one engine operation without online washing (only offline). This study has involved correcting measurement data not only just with compressor inlet temperatures (CITs) and pressures but also with relative humidity (RH). turbomatch, an in-house GT performance simulation software has been implemented to obtain nondimensional factors for the corrections. All of the data visualization and analysis have been conducted using tableau analytics software, which facilitates the investigation of global and local events within an operation. The concept of using of handles and filters is proposed in this study, and it demonstrates the level of insight to the data and forms the basis of the outcomes obtained. This work shows that during operation, the engine performance is mostly deteriorating, though to varying degrees. Online washing also showed an influence on this, reducing the average degradation rate each hour by half, when compared to the engine operating only with offline washing. Hourly marginal improvements were also observed with an increased average wash frequency of nine hours and a similar outcome obtained when the washing solution is 2.3 times more concentrated. Clear benefits of offline washes are also presented, alongside the typically obtainable values of increased power output after a wash, also in relation to the number of operating hours before a wash.