Development of Elemental Technologies for Advanced Humid Air Turbine System

Abstract

The advanced humid air turbine (AHAT) system improves the thermal efficiency of gas turbine power generation by using a humidifier, a water atomization cooling (WAC) system, and a heat recovery system, thus eliminating the need for an extremely high firing temperature and pressure ratio. The following elemental technologies have been developed to realize the AHAT system: (1) a broad working range and high-efficiency compressor that utilizes the WAC system to reduce compression work, (2) turbine blade cooling techniques that can withstand high heat flux due to high-humidity working gas, and (3) a combustor that achieves both low NOx emissions and a stable flame condition with high-humidity air. A gas turbine equipped with a two-stage radial compressor (with a pressure ratio of 8), two-stage axial turbine, and a reverse-flow type of single-can combustor has been developed based on the elemental technologies described above. A pilot plant that consists of a gas turbine generator, recuperator, humidification tower, water recovery system, WAC system, economizer, and other components is planned to be constructed, with testing slated to begin in October 2006 to validate the performance and reliability of the AHAT system. The expected performance is as follows: thermal efficiency of 43% (LHV), output of 3.6MW, and NOx emissions of less than 10ppm at 15% O2. This paper introduces the elemental technologies and the pilot plant to be built for the AHAT system.

Humidification tower for humid air gas turbine cycles: Experimental analysis

“…Finally, an almost unique industrial experiment is being carried out by Hitachi Ltd., as reported in [16]. They are building an innovative configuration of HAT cycle, where water is injected upstream of the compressor (wet compression) as well as being introduced upstream of the recuperator by means of a packing-less saturation tower (conceptually the tower is similar to the previous case).…”