The Power Enhancement of a Mini-Gas Turbine by Adding Ethanol to the Compressor Inlet Air

Abstract

An experimental study is conducted on the utilization of the inlet ethanol injection technique in order to evaluate its impact on the performance of a two-shaft T200D mini-gas turbine engine. The maximum degradation recorded in power output was 32.8% at the climate temperature of 45oC. Nevertheless, at that temperature, adding ethanol with Eth/LPG ratio of 20% by volume brought an enhancement in power output of 19.2% compared to normal LPG run. SFC of the dual-fuel engine ranked a level of 22% higher than that with pure LPG consumption. The overall efficiency suffered a maximum reduction of 14.4% with Eth/LPG fuel ratio of 20%, but when the loading was raised beyond 70% of the engine full load; the efficiency of dual-fuel engine excelled the normal LPG engine by 3.1% at the corresponding Eth/LPG ratio maintaining a power turbine speed of 12000 rpm.

Keywords

• Alcohol gas turbine
• Inlet cooling
• Alternative fuels
• Bio-fuels