MECH 1906 –

Mechanical Engineering for Modern Life

Lecture 7–
Gas Turbines

By Hong Tao on Feb th

27 , 2024
 What is a gas turbine? Where are they applied?
It is an internal combustion engine that burns gaseous
or liquid fuel. It delivers the energy of this combustion
(1) either by means of thrust, in an aircraft jet engine;
or (2) – by means of a rotating shaft – it provides (a)
electricity via a generator, or (b) mechanical power for
driving compressors or ship propulsion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcWkEKNvqCA

Gas turbine at CLP HK to generate electricity

Turbine engine for an aircraft

to generate thrust

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MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
 What is a gas turbine? Where are they applied?

An aircraft jet engine To generate THRUST

Land-based gas turbine To drive the shaft

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MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
Why gas turbines are important?
Manufacturers: General Electric, Pratt
&Whitney, SNECMA, Rolls Royce, Honeywell,
Siemens –Westinghouse, Alstom

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/ind
ustry-analysis/gas-turbine-market

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MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
Why gas turbines are important?

For aviation sector

Future goals for aviation sector

• 50% reduction in fuel consumption.
• 50% reduction of perceived noise.
• 80% reduction in NOx emission.
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MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
Why gas turbines are important?

For power generation

Conversion processes for electricity production (2035)

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 Gas turbines components

Three main components:

Compressors, combustion chamber, turbines

GE gas turbine working principle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcWkEKNvqCA

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MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
Gas turbines components

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MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
 Gas turbines components

Compressor – increases the pressure of incoming air Air

before it enters the combustion chamber. compression
ratio 12:1
As air flows into the compressor, energy is transferred from its rotating
blades to the air. Pressure and temperature of the air increase.

Combustion chamber – fuel is combined with high pressure air

and burned, resulting in high temperature exhaust gases to turn
the turbine to convert chemical energy into mechanical energy.

Turbines – is a set of stationary and aerofoil – section blades, which extract power from
hot air flow by rotating blades. These rotating blades both draw more compressed air into
the combustion chamber and spin a generator to produce electricity.

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MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
Gas turbines components
Groups of components based on their FUNCTIONS :
Group 1 – Inlet, Exhaust, Pipe – includes those components in which no
transfer of thermal energy with the surrounding environment takes place.
Their function consists of transporting the mass, accelerating the mass flow
through the nozzle, and reducing the kinetic energy through a diffuser.

Group 2 – Heat exchanger, Combustion chamber, After-burner –

includes those components within which the processes of thermal
energy exchange or heat generation take place.

Group 3 – Compressor, Turbine components – includes components within which an

exchange of mechanical energy (shaft power) with the surroundings takes place.

GE gas turbine components details

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FiM-tWjMHs 10
MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
 Fundamentals of gas turbine cycles

Isolated system

The entropy change of an isolated

system is the sum of the entropy
changes of its components, and is
never less than zero.

https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/pvtsplot.html 11
MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
 Fundamentals of gas turbine cycles
Ideal Joule – Brayton Cycle (simple cycle) Pressure
2-3- Heat added
Temperature through combustion
qin

3-4-Useful work for

shaft power or thrust
qin
1-2- Pressure increases
Volume decreases
through compressor qout
4-1-Heat removed
through exhaust
qout
Volume

The Joule–Brayton cycle is a conceptually simple thermodynamic cycle that can be technically made in
operation with a very small set of components. The cycle consists of four processes with a gas or a
Entropy mixture of gases as working fluid. The first process is an isentropic compression followed by a heat
supply at constant pressure, an isentropic expansion, and a heat release at constant pressure.

The cycle consists of two adiabatic and two constant pressure processes, which can be easily
accomplished in a compressor and a expander and in two heat exchangers working at different pressures.
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MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
 Fundamentals of gas turbine cycles
Real Joule – Brayton Cycle (simple cycle)
Temperature The deviation of an actual gas-
turbine cycle from the ideal Brayton
cycle as a result of irreversibilities
The ideal cycle described based on the
assumption that the working fluid is an ideal
gas, with constant composition, flowrate and
specific heat at constant pressure in all the
cycle processes, and that all the
transformations occur in ideal machines
without any irreversible process: heat
exchangers do not have any heat loss to the
environment or any pressure loss in the fluid
flow, and the compression and expansion
processes are adiabatic and isentropic.

Power (MWe) <5 5–15 15–50 50–150 >150

Pressure (bar) 6–12 12–15 (20) 12–15 (>20/35) 12–15 (>20) 15–25 (>25/35)
Temperature (°C) 270–380 350–450 (500) 350–450 (500) 350–450 (500) 400–480 (550)
(compressor exit)
Temperature (°C) 700–1100 850–1150 1100–1230 1150–1280 1230–1280
Entropy (turbine entry) (1400)
Temperature (°C) 350–550 400–500 450–550 500–600 550–600 (640)
In real situations, the processes 1-2 and 3-4 are not
isentropic and the process lines lean to the right (turbine exit)
because of the increase in entropy of the flow. 13
MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
 Fundamentals of gas turbine cycles
Combined Gas-Steam Cycle
– produce electricity and captures waste heat
from the gas turbine to increase efficiency and Heat Recovery Steam Generator
electrical output. (HRSG) creates steam from the
gas turbine waste heat and Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG) consists of three
delivers it to the steam turbine. main sections:
Burn the fuel 1. The economiser, where steam is preheated
Fast moving hot
exhaust spins from the condenser temperature, close to ambient
Compresses
turbine blades temperature, to a few degrees of temperature below
air and mixes
it with fuel
saturation temperature. The water from the economiser
flows into a drum, where liquid and steam are separated.

Generate 2. The vaporiser, which receives saturated

electricity water from the drum and vaporises it, delivering a
water/steam mixture to the drum for separation.

3. The superheater, which receives saturated

steam from the drum and where steam temperature is
increased to the desired steam turbine inlet temperature.

The steam turbine converted

into additional electricity
https://youtu.be/GF-70yncAVY
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 Gas turbine types and applications
Power generation
Simple cycle power plant

A type of natural gas power plant which operate by propelling hot gas
through a turbine, in order to generate electricity. They are only used to
meet peaking power needs on the electrical grid.

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MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
 Gas turbine types and applications
Power generation

Combined cycle power plant

A type of natural gas power plant consisting of a

simple cycle gas plant in combination with a second
steam engine. The hot exhaust gases from the initial
gas turbine are sent to the steam engine, and the heat
from them is used to generate steam. This steam can
then expand through another turbine, generating
even more electricity and increasing the plant's overall
efficiency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVjtFXWe9Eo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeiu-wcyEbs Combined Cycle Gas Turbine Process

Installed capacity: 550MW
Efficiency: > 60%

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 Gas turbine types and applications
Power generation

Simple Cycle
• Operate when demand is high –peak
demand
• Operate for short / variable times
• Designed for quick start-up
• Not designed to be efficient but reliable
not cost effective to build

•Combined Cycle: gas & steam turbine

• Operate for peak and economic dispatch
• Designed for quick start-up
• Designed for efficient and cost-effective
operations
• Typically has ability to operate in Simple
Cycle Mode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPg7hOxFItI
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Combined_cycle_animation.ogv?embedplayer=yes#
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 Gas turbine types and applications
Power generation – Hydrogen Fueled Gas Turbines –
An innovation to ultimately achieve CARBON – FREE)

Tackling challenges:

• Blending Hydrogen with natural gases with

various ratios (from 5% up to 100%);

• Combustion testing for optimization;

• Gas turbine components modification and

re-design to adapt to the Hydrogen fuel;

• Related infrastructural change, such as

transportation, supply pipeline, and storage
of Hydrogen gas;

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 Gas turbine types and applications
Aero-gines
Gas turbines for air transport applications (aero-engines) come in three different
configurations (Rolls-Royce, 2011b), namely:

• turbojet/turbofan (generating thrust from the kinetic energy of the hot exhaust gas
and additional air – bypass air – forced around the core engine);

• turboprop (driving a propeller as mechanical load), and;

• turboshaft designs (conveying mechanical power to a rotating shaft, for example,

helicopter rotor)

http://www.animatedengines.com/jets.html
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 Gas turbine types and applications
Aero-gines
Selection of Turbojet

Selection of Turbofan

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 Gas turbine types and applications
Aero-gines
Selection of Turboshaft

Selection of Turboprop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVjStAxMFEY

Turboprop provides a jet

thrust and drives a propeller

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teICr3Yg14U
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 Gas turbine types and applications
Aero-gines

Selection of Pulsejet

Selection of Ramjet

1’01 22
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 Gas turbine types and applications
Industrial turbines – surface transport (ships, trains, trucks)
For ship propulsion systems, gas turbines with compact design
(small volume/space requirements; reduced weight) are used,
such as in some tanker/freight/container ships.

Gas turbine for marine propulsion systems (MT30;

36 MW) (Rolls-Royce Marine gas turbine engines

Industrial turbines – Micro-turbine

Gas turbines with a power output below 200 kW are commonly
classified as ‘microturbines’. They find use in applications where
uninterrupted power supply (UPS) on a local scale is required (e.g.,
offices, banks, computing centres, service providers, manufacturing
plants) in emergency situations for a limited time span.

Micro-turbines work like jet engines but

produce electricity instead of thrust.
Photo Credit: Capstone Turbine Corp.
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 Gas turbine types and applications
Industrial turbines – mechanical drives
For applications requiring significant mechanical shaft power (above 1 MW), direct drive type
arrangements with gas turbine engines are quite popular. Such cases are most often found in
the oil and gas business and in the (chemical) process industry, where powerful drives are
needed to operate process gas compressors, blowers/fans and pumps.

For air compressor

For chiller

For blower
For pump

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Gas turbine types and applications
Need for future gas turbines
Power generation
• Fuel economy; low emission; alternative fuel
Commercial aircraft
• Fuel economy; low emission; low weight; high thrust
Military aircraft
• low weight; high thrust

Technologies to improve gas turbines and system efficiency

The gas turbine efficiency improvements have resulted from a
combination of technology efforts:
• Improved materials with better high temperature capability.
• Improved cooling.
• The development of thermal barrier coatings.
• More advanced aerodynamic design for blades.
• Reduction of losses (e.g., by better sealing capability).

The total system efficiency improvements have been realised by:

• Optimised thermodynamic design for the gas turbine and steam
turbine cycle.
• Improved performance of the steam cycle (supercritical steam loop).
• The application of bottoming cycles or waste heat recovery units
(e.g., for city heating).
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MECH-1906 – Gas Turbines
Key points for this lecture

✓ Where are gas turbines applied ?

Thinking for next lecture
✓ How does a gas turbine work (e.g. jet engine)?
Lecture 8 – Statics and Dynamics
✓ What are different types of Aero-engines?
• Are forces and velocities vectors or scalars?
✓ What is a Brayton Cycle?
• How do we perform vector addition and
✓ Why does a combined cycle power plant have higher efficiency? subtraction?

• When performing statics analysis on a structural

member, what equilibrium conditions
(equations) shall we use?

• What are the mathematical relationships of

distance, velocity, acceleration, and applied
forces.