The conceptual design and development of a micro gas turbine generator

Abstract

All over the world interest in small scale stand alone power generators is growing. This interest is motivated by lower electrical costs and/or the capability to be unaffected by power failures and blackouts that could damage electronic networks and machinery. The potential of small scale power supplying units is being recognized, as generating capacity is quickly becoming too small. Furthermore, the need for off-grid power supply to remote areas, additional power supply to reduce grid power usage during peak demand periods when power is expensive, as well as the advantages of distributed generation, also increases the demand for this type of power. Technology that holds great potential for small scale power generation is the use of gas turbine machinery to drive these generators. Gas turbine machinery is mainly based on the Brayton cycle and variants hereof. These variants are compared and evaluated under different parameter changes (Chapters 2 and 3) while different configurations of gas turbine systems were evaluated as well. The selection of turbine machinery is done with the help of the software package (Flownex) where the same potential turbine machinery is compared in Chapter 4. A gas turbine system mostly consists out of the following components: Compressor, Turbine, Heater 1 Combustion chamber and Heat exchangers. The compressor and turbine configuration are discussed as part of the turbine machinery selection process in Chapter 4. The following Chapters (5, 6 and 7) are dedicated to design of the rest of the components. All of these components are simulated as a system both under steady state conditions as well as under transient conditions in Chapter 7. Different operating conditions like start-up and load-following are simulated as well in this part if the study. The simulations are done for a small scale (60 - 80kW) micro gas turbine generator It is recommended that now that the concept of a micro gas turbine generator was proven, that firstly prototypes of the components like the combustor chamber and heat exchangers are built, followed by a complete system, based on the outputs of this study.