Configuration Discussions of the Chemically Recuperated Gas Turbine Powering a Ship

Abstract

The chemically recuperated gas turbine (CRGT) is a promising engine on ship because of its high thermal efficiency and low pollutant emission. This paper is aimed at determining an applicable configuration of the CRGT for marine applications. Diesel is the selected fuel, and the minimization of Gibbs free energy method (MGFE) is applied to model the diesel-steam reforming reaction. A chemical regenerator (CR) is designed based on the reforming reaction, and a steam generator (SG) is set on the foundation of thermodynamics. Some feasible configurations of the CRGT are proposed based on a marine gas turbine with two spool shaft and a free power turbine and the best one is determined by performance calculation. The best configuration has a 44.51% thermal efficiency at rated 25MW output power of the prototype, and good stability in operation. Additionally, the selected configuration has lower combustion temperature at the same output power with the other configurations, and it can yield less NOX emissions. These works form the foundation of the CRGT being applied in the marine propulsion and provide a research thought for the CRGT in other applications.