Chapter 3

Gas-Turbine Cycles

This book focuses on the design of regenerators for high-performance regenera-

tive gas turbines. The ways in which gas-turbine regenerators can be designed
for high system performance can be understood by studying gas-turbine cycles,
the thermodynamic cycles by which gas turbines convert heat into work. This
chapter introduces gas-turbine cycles.
Section 3.1 describes how to calculate two parameters that quantify the
performance of a gas turbine: (1) thermal efficiency, 11TH and (2) cycle specific
power, W'. Section 3.1 defines these performance parameters. The first and
second laws of thermodynamics govern the performances of gas-turbine cycles,
and determine the magnitudes of the two performance parameters. Section 3.2
gives expressions of the first and second laws.
The remainder of this chapter describes four kinds of gas-turbine cycles:

1. Simple cycle (Section 3.3);

2. Regenerative cycle (Section 3.4);

3. Intercooled Regenerative (ICR) cycle (Section 3.5); and

4. ICR cycle with reheat (Section 3.6).

The performances of these cycles are demonstrated with results from cycle cal-
culations using the commercial software RGT-OPT™ 1. These calculations
show how gas turbines achieve high performance under the constraints imposed
by the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

3.1 Performance
Thermal efficiency and cycle specific power are two parameters that quantify
the performance of gas-turbine cycles.
1 RGT-OPT is a trademark of Douglas Stephen Beck, the principal author, and is available
from him.

37
D. S. Beck et al., Gas-Turbine Regenerators
© Chapman & Hall 1996
38 3 Gas-Turbine Cycles

Thermal Efficiency. Thermal efficiency indicates the amount of power pro-

duced by a gas turbine from a given heat-input rate:

HI
TlTH == -;- , (3.1)
Q
where
TIT H Thermal efficiency (-);
HI Net power output of the gas turbine (W); and
Q Heat-input rate to the gas turbine (W).

From the first law of thermodynamics, the power output can at most equal the
heat-input rate, so thermal efficiency can at most equal one. The second law
of thermodynamics further constrains thermal efficiency. From the second law,
Carnot [I1J proved that the thermal efficiency of a gas-turbine cycle is limited
as follows 2 :
To
TIT H ::; 1 - TIT ' (3.2)

where
To Compressor-inlet temperature (K); and
TIT Turbine-Inlet Temperature (K).

The upper limit on the thermal efficiency of a gas-turbine cycle is known as the
Carnot efficiency:
To (3.3)
TlCarnot == 1 - TIT
For example, for a compressor-inlet temperature of To = 300K and a turbine-
inlet temperature of TIT = 1, 200K, the Carnot efficiency is

300K
TlCarnot =1- 1,200K = 75% , (3.4)

which is quite high. The efficiency of an actual engine is much lower than its
associated Carnot efficiency. Efficiency goals for automotive regenerative gas
turbines at full power are about 50%. Automotive spark-ignition engines have
efficiencies of about half this level, and automotive diesel engines operate at
about 30% efficiency.

Cycle Specific Power. In addition to thermal efficiency, cycle specific power

is another parameter that quantifies the performance of gas-turbine cycles. Cy-
cle specific power is calculated from the specific power of the components that
comprise the gas turbine. The specific power of a component is defined as the

2Equation 3.2 is valid only if the temperatures are absolute temperatures. This book uses
only absolute temperatures with Kelvin units.