Systems Level Performance Estimations for a Pulse Detonation Combustor Based Hybrid Engine

The Pulse Detonation Combustor (PDC) has recently evoked much interest as a pressure-gain combustor for use in gas turbines. A key application for a Pulse Detonation Engine (PDE) concept has been envisioned as a hybrid power generation engine, which would replace the combustor in a conventional gas turbine with a PDC. Estimations of performance parameters, namely, thermal efficiency (η_th) and specific work (W_net) are reported for a PDC based hybrid engine for various configurations of the engine. The performance enhancing configurations of the PDC-based hybrid engine, considered in the present study, include simple cycle, intercooling, regeneration and reheat, similar to the configurations for a conventional gas turbine (GT) engine in the literature. The performance estimations for a conventional gas turbine engine and a PDC based hybrid engine are compared for the same operating conditions (such as inlet pressure, inlet temperature, compression ratio, overall equivalence ratio) and for various configurations. The thermal efficiency of an intercooled PDC hybrid engine with regeneration has the highest value for the entire range of turbine pressure ratios, from 1.2 to 40 (corresponding to a compression ratio range of 1 to 30). An intercooled PDC based hybrid engine with reheat produces the highest specific work (W_net) when compared to all other configurations. Among simple-cycle /regeneration /reheat configurations of a PDC based hybrid engine, η_τh for the intercooled PDC based hybrid engines has the highest estimated value (0.47) at a turbine pressure ratio of 30. The intercooled PDC based hybrid engine also produces the highest specific work (W_net) when compared to simple-cycle/regeneration/reheat hybrid engine configurations over the entire range of turbine pressure ratios.