HYDROGEN FUELED AND COOLED GAS-TURBINE ENGINE

Hydrogen has many attractive features that give it a promising future as an alternative to hydrocarbon fuels in both steady and unsteady combustion processes. On the other hand, the gas turbine engine is gaining firm ground in different fields of application. In this work, the performance of hydrogen fueled and turbine-blade cooled heat exchange gas turbine cycle is compared with a similar cycle using diesel fuel with the conventional method of compressor air for cooling. The analysis covered obtaining power, specific fuel consumption and engine thermal efficiency over a wide range of the operating variables namely compressor pressure ratio Rc and the cycle maximum temperature T03. A computer program was specially designed to carry out the whole computations. Results show that the hydrogen cycle is superior to the air cycle by about 50% in power and 9% in thermal efficiency. © 1990.