Abstract
Sensitivity to ambient air temperatures, consuming a large amount of fuel, and wasting a significant amount of heat dumped into the ambient atmosphere are three major challenges facing gas turbine power plants. This study was conducted to simultaneously solve all three aforementioned GT problems using solar energy and introducing a new configuration that consists of solar preheating and inlet-air-cooling systems. In this study, air was preheated at a combustion chamber inlet using parabolic trough collectors. Then, inlet air to the compressor was cooled by these collectors by operating an absorption cooling cycle. At the design point conditions, this novel proposed integration resulted in a 6.87% relative increase in generated power and a 10.53% relative decrement in fuel consumption, achieving a 19.45% relative increment in the plant’s thermal efficiency. This was accompanied by a reduction of 0.026 kg/s, 4.2 kg/s, and 0.278 kg/s in CO2, CO, and NOx emissions, respectively. Finally, spider diagrams were employed to assess the impact of the operating parameters on the overall system’s performance and its associated environmental implications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2024
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.3390/su16146229
Funding Information
This study was sponsored by the University of Kentucky IR4TD research fund.
Repository Citation
Abubaker, Ahmad M.; Darwish Ahmad, Adnan; Singh, Binit B.; Manaserh, Yaman M.; and Al-Ghussain, Loiy, "Energy and Environmental Analyses of a Solar–Gas Turbine Combined Cycle with Inlet Air Cooling" (2024). Institute of Research for Technology Development Faculty Publications. 6.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/ir4td_facpub/6
Included in
Computer Sciences Commons, Energy Systems Commons, Environmental Sciences Commons, Geography Commons
Notes/Citation Information
© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).