AN APPROACH TO EVALUATE THE HEAT EXCHANGER RETROFIT FOR INSTALLED INDUSTRIAL GAS TURBINES: PART I – TECHNICAL EVALUATION

Waleed Al-Busaidi, Pericles Pilidis

Abstract: This paper is the first part of a two-part study aiming to introduce a new integrated approach to evaluate the techno-economic value of recuperator retrofit on existing gas turbine engines. The original gas turbines are designed for combined cycles so that the pressure ratios are moderate to secure suitable exhaust temperatures. One way to enhance the thermal efficiency of some gas turbines is by using recuperation to recover some of the exhaust heat. In this part, the developed model is described and implemented for two gas turbine engines so the obtained characteristics are evaluated against the actual data. The new approach will assist users to select the suitable gas turbine models with favorable recuperator characteristics based on a technical and economic prospective. Besides, the performance results are used to design an ap propriate shell and tube heat exchanger. Moreover, a new technique has been established to define the typical heat exchanger parameters in order to ensure the highest possible improvements over the original cycles. One of the main features of this method is that it depends only on the velocity of hot and cold heat exchanger streams from which the rest of the heat exchanger design and performance characteristics were derived.

Keywords: integrated approach, techno-economic value, recuperation, shell and tube heat exchanger, velocity

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2015.0409001