Gas Turbine Inlet Air Cooling Using Non-Adiabatic Saturation Process

Gas turbine performances depend on ambient conditions, like temperature, pressure and humidity. In particular high ambient temperatures make the gas turbine working in off-design operating conditions with significant decrease in performances. The variations in performance can be limited by gas turbine inlet air cooling. In the present paper the possibility of gas turbine inlet air cooling using a non-adiabatic saturation process is analyzed. This type of cooling is made by saturating inlet air with chilled water in a direct-contact heat exchanger. The behaviour of an industrial gas turbine with non-adiabatic saturation cooler is simulated starting from climatic data of various representative Italian sites. The results of the simulation, along with those previously achieved by the authors for the same gas turbine with adiabatic evaporative cooler, are used to perform a technical & economical analysis. It allowed to determine the conditions of gas turbine use making economically convenie...