Thermodynamic Analysis of a Power Plant Integrated With Fogging Inlet Cooling and a Biomass Gasification

Biomass energy and especially biofuels produced by biomass gasification are clean and renewable options for power plants. Also on hot days the performance of gas turbines decrease substantially and fog cooling is a useful method for mitigating this problem. In the present paper, a biomass-integrated fogging steam injected gas turbine cycle is analyzed with energy and exergy methods. Increasing the compressor pressure ratio is observed to increase the air flow rate in plant but to reduce the biomass flow rate. Also increasing the gas turbine inlet temperature decreases the air and biomass flow rates. By increasing the pressure ratio the energy and exergy efficiencies increase, especially at lower pressure ratios. Increasing the gas turbine inlet temperature increases the both efficiencies. Overspray increases the energy efficiency and net cycle power slightly. The gas turbine exhibits the highest exergy efficiency of the cycle components and combustor the lowest. A comparison of the cycle with similar cycles fired by natural gas and differently configured cycles fueled by biomass shows that the cycle with natural gas firing has an energy efficiency 18 percentage points above the biomass fired cycle and that steam injection increases the energy efficiency about 5 percentage points relative to the cycle without steam injection.