Abstract
Inter-stage water injection is currently a common method to reduce the compression work. In this paper, we evaluate the effect of this approach on an opposed-setting-two-stage centrifugal compressor which is designed for a small gas turbine numerically. The Eulerian-Lagrangian method is adopted to calculate the continuous flow field and discrete particle terms with the k-ε turbulence model. 6 water injection conditions are conducted to compare with the dry air condition. The performance curve shift to the right-up side, i.e. higher total pressure ratio, higher efficiency and larger choking mass flow. However, the larger the performance improvement gained by inter-stage injection, the worse the stability will be. Under the micro injection ratio (about 0.1%), the stall margin of the compressor is improved. Additionally, with a proper injection parameter, the loading in the diffuser can be reduced and promise a wider stall margin. Nevertheless, there still exists droplets at the outlet of the high-pressure diffuser because of the insufficient time for evaporation.
