OFF-DESIGN AND TRANSIENT ANALYSIS OF SATURATORS FOR HUMID AIR TURBINE CYCLES

摘要

Considering the growing interest in the possible applications of HAT technology, characterized by the introduction of the humidification tower (saturator), this work proposes a novel model to analyze the saturator under both off-design and transient conditions. On the basis of this model, the TRANSAT code was developed and tested with experimental results from the pilot plant installed at the University of Lund in Sweden. Both off-design and transient analysis were performed. Saturator off-design analysis showed that the water inlet temperature and air/water mass flow ratio are the main parameters that control saturator operating behavior, especially saturator water and gas outlet conditions. On the assumptions made for the transient analysis, relevant results were achieved. The saturator showed a fast response to all the input variations. In particular, its characteristic times were essentially determined by the fluid residence time in the humidification tower. With regard to plant control, the main conclusion is that the integration of the saturator and the power plant is not expected to be critical for the control of the whole system.