Application of bioethanol in gas turbines

Abstract

To reduce our dependence on primer energy resources, renewable fuels are appearing in an increasing number of fields. Environment has a major effect on theoperating conditions of a gas turbine. Thermal efficiency and power loss occurs, due to higher ambient temperature in summers. There are certain methods to reduce gas turbine inlet temperature, e.g. water evaporation, adsorption and mechanical cooling. Ours is the following: inject bioethanol into the inlet air, which will evaporate, so it reduces inlet temperature. Emission and efficiency measurements were taken to evaluate this method. The Department´s Capstone C330 gas turbine use airblast atomizers for liquid fuel evaporation. Air, as auxiliary medium was replaced with ethanol-water compound steam,which can be easily produced with waste heat of the gas turbine. A test pad was built to examine an isolated fuel nozzle in operation. Pictures and high frame rate videos were taken for visual evaluation. This information helped us to fine-tune our system, and then optimal operating conditions were determined.