In this work, the effect of various types of fuels on the performance and efficiency of Al-Khairat gas turbine power plant in Kerbala City, Iraq has been investigated. The plant contains 10 General Electric Frame 9E gas turbine units, each of around 125 MW. Three fuels were used in this study; crude oil, natural gas, and biomass gasification producer (synthesis) gas. Currently, liquid crude oil is used as fuel for this plant. For comparison purposes, this power plant was simulated utilizing Aspen-Hysys software. Hysys simulation modelled in accordance with experimental power plant conditions and data was applied and showed high validity. Due to this validity, the plant’s efficiency and performance were calculated. Similarly, plant efficiency and performance for the other two fuels were also calculated. Furthermore, many important parameters that affect plant efficiency and performance for these three fuels (ambient temperature, pressure ratio, CO2 emission gases, heat rate and fuel consumption) were also investigated. Compared to the other two fuels, results show that the use of natural gas is the optimal choice for the plant, due to its increase of station efficiency and productivity, by approximately 3.12% and 10% respectively. At the same time, it reduced fuel consumption by 6% and produced less emission greenhouse gas.

A small-scale prototype with one thermoelectric module was constructed to collect water from the atmosphere, and studied experimentally. It was driven by a solar panel module and operated by reducing the cold side temperature to less than the dew point temperature of ambient air. The system was designed and assembled depending on the capacity of the Peltier device, of dimension (4×4 cm^2), and energy needed. The system consisted of a heat sink, extended cold surface, Peltier device and fan, which were housed in a vertical rectangular section duct and used with different air temperatures, airflow rates, and humidity levels. A numerical model was used to study the temperature distribution on the cold side, which was applied to size the cooler to estimate the water production rate. The results suggest that the water production rate increased with the increasing of the moisture level in the air. The tests also showed that increasing the amount of air flowing on the heat sink increased the amount of water collected and enhanced the transfer of heat on the hot side. The achieved results show that the collection of water is reasonable with the proposed thermoelectric method using solar energy.

Gas turbine power output is hypersensitive by environmental conditions, mainly in arid and hot climates. This research focuses on using a fogging air intake cooling system to improve the performance of the gas turbine in the weather conditions of Karbala city. The Aspen HYSYS software was used to simulate real data collected from the Karbala power plant (gas turbine). The simulation results were found for a gas turbine power plant with and without using the unit of air cooling. The results show there was a drop in inlet air temperature in the case of existence the cooling system when the ambient temperature in the range of (25 to 60)℃. The utilizing of air cooling technique with the gas turbine causes a gain in net power and thermal efficiency and reduction in the consumption of fuel. In addition, the heat rate reduces by 7% compared to not adding the system. However, the gas turbine plant shows better performance by employing the fogging system in the selected power plant when relative humidity below 40% and temperature exceed 30℃ during the summer months.