Evolution and main design challenges of new-generation marine power plants

Abstract

Object and purpose of research. This paper discusses marine power plants, analysing the trends in marine gas turbine design in Russia and abroad and identifying the key challenges in the retrofitting of aircraft gas turbines for marine applications. The paper also describes the state of the art in Russian marine gas turbine engineering and outlines design trends in new-generation gas turbines. Materials and methods. The paper generalizes global and Russian experience of marine gas turbine engineering based on available publications, as well as presents thermogasdynamic calculations for marine gas turbines and gas turbine assemblies of both basic and compound cycle in order to justify optimal trends in their development. Main results. This paper identified the main laws of marine gas turbine and power plant developments. The case study of UEC-Saturn projects illustrated the prospects offered by a family of unified marine and industrial engines based on a retrofitted airborne gas turbine. The study also justified the ways for further improvement of marine gas turbines (both basic- and compound-cycle). Finally, this paper illustrated UEC-Saturn JSC achievements in heat- and corrosion-resistant materials. Conclusion. This study outlines the main ways for further progress in marine power plants and concludes that fuel efficiency improvement potential of gas turbines is already close to the maximum achievable efficiency of basic-cycle gas turbines, so further work in this field is unlikely to result in any significant gains in fuel efficiency. The advances of various compound-cycle gas turbine designs are not evident and must be explored in the context of their operational profile aboard specific ship. Further efforts in the efficiency improvement of power plants must be focused on the optimization of their configuration in terms of basic elements (gas turbine, diesel, gearbox, electric systems) with the maximum inter-design commonality.

Keywords

• gas turbine
• marine power plant
• complex-cycle gas turbine