Experimental Study on a Packed Bed Humidifier in an Evaporative Gas Turbine Available to Purchase

This paper examines the performance of gas turbine cycles operating with a mixture of air and water vapor. Special attention is paid to the humidification tower, where the water vapor is added to the air. The experiments in this study have been carried out in the first evaporative gas turbine pilot plant located at Lund Institute of Technology in the southern part of Sweden. This pilot plant is based on a Volvo VT600 gas turbine with a design load of 600 kW. The compressor pressure is just above 8 bars and the intake air-flow is 3.4 kg/s. Roughly 70 percent of the compressed air is humidified in the humidification tower, which is the only humidifying device. The tower diameter is 0.7 m and the total flexible packing height is 0.9 m of a stainless steel structured packing with a specific surface area of 240 m²/m³. The number of mass transfer units in the humidifier was experimentally determined to about 3 for a packing height of 0.45 m. The height of a transfer unit from the literature data for the packing is predicted to be 0.24 m. With a packing height of 0.45 m, only about 2 transfer units are expected from the packing. However, the droplet zones above and below the packing contribute about 1 transfer unit. Thus, it is concluded that the mass transfer performance of the packing is adequately predicted by literature data. Equations are provided to adjust the height of a transfer unit for other pressures and temperatures. For full-scale plants operating at higher pressures and temperatures it is suggested that the high quality exhaust heat, (temperatures above the boiling point) is recovered in a boiler and injected as steam. The remaining part of the exhaust heat, (temperatures below the boiling point) is used to produce hot water for a relatively small humidification tower using only a portion of the compressed air flow.