Twin spool industrial gas turbine engine low pressure compressor with diffuser.
None.
The present invention relates generally to an industrial gas turbine engine for electric power generation, and more specifically, to cooling air bleed off from a low pressure compressor (LPC) diffuser to improve the diffuser performance.
An industrial gas turbine engine is used for electrical power production where the engine drives an electric generator. Compressed air from a compressor is burned with a fuel in a combustor to produce a hot gas stream that is passed through a turbine, where the turbine drives the compressor and the electric generator through the rotor shaft. In an industrial gas turbine for electric power production, the speed of the generator is the same as the rotor of the engine since the use of a speed reduction gear box decreases the efficiency of the engine. For a 60 Hertz system, the generator and engine speed is 3,600 rpm. For a 50 Hertz system like that used in Europe, the generator and the engine speed is 3,000 rpm.
Engine efficiency can be increased by passing a higher temperature hot gas stream through the turbine. However, the turbine inlet temperature is limited to material properties of the turbine parts exposed to the hot gas stream such as rotor blades and stator vanes especially in the first stage. For this reason, first stage airfoils are cooled using cooling air bled off from the compressor. Cooling air for the airfoils passes through elaborate cooling circuits within the airfoils, and is typically discharged out film cooling holes on surfaces where the highest gas stream temperature are found. This reduces the efficiency of the engine since the work done by the compressor on compressing the cooling air is lost when the spent cooling air is discharged directly into the turbine hot gas stream because no additional work is done on the turbine.
An industrial gas turbine engine for electrical power production, where the engine includes a high spool that drives an electric generator and a separate low spool that produces compressed air that is delivered to an inlet of the high pressure compressor (HPC) for turbocharging the high spool. A portion of the low pressure compressor (LPC) outflow or core flow is bled off and used as the cooling air for hot parts of the high pressure turbine (HPT). The cooling air flows through the hot parts for cooling, and is then discharged into the combustor and burned with fuel to produce the hot gas stream for the turbine. The work done on the compressed cooling air is thus not lost but used to produce work in the turbine.
In another embodiment of the present invention, some of the core flow from the diffuser is drawn off using a fan driven by the rotor of the engine to improve the performance of the diffuser. The drawn off core flow is then merged back into the core flow.
In another embodiment of the present invention similar to the second embodiment above, the fan is driven by a motor external to the main duct and the engine.
The present invention is a twin spool industrial gas turbine (IGT) engine for electrical power production with a low spool having a low pressure compressor and a diffuser, where some of the core flow from the compressor discharged is drawn off and used as cooling air for turbine hot parts, or where some of the core flow is drawn off by a fan in order to improve the performance of the diffuser. The cooling air is passed through turbine hot parts (such as stator vanes, rotor blades, rotor disks, combustor liners) to be cooled, and then reintroduced into the compressed air from the high pressure compressor upstream of the combustor. The cooling air bled off from the LPC passes through a boost compressor to increase its pressure prior to passing through the hot parts to be cooled so that enough pressure remains after cooling of the hot parts to be discharged into the combustor along with compressed air from the main compressor. The core flow drawn off by the fan to improve the diffuser performance is reintroduced into the core flow duct upstream of the inlet to the high pressure compressor. Cooling air for the turbine hot parts can then be extracted from the core flow duct between the merge section and the inlet to the high pressure compressor.
The outlet of the low pressure compressor (LPC) includes a diffuser with bleed off channels that bleed off a portion of the core flow from the LPC using a fan to draw off the compressed air through the bleed off channels that functions to increase the efficiency of the diffuser. The bleed off compressed air is then reintroduced into the core flow that flows to an inlet of a high pressure compressor (HPC) where some of the core flow is bled off and used for cooling of the high pressure turbine (HPT) hot parts such as stator vanes or rotor blades.
The core flow from the LPC 15 to the HPC 11 through the core flow duct 22 has a cooling air line 23 that removes some of the core flow to be used as cooling air for a hot part of the HPT 13 such as a first stage stator vanes or rotor blades in a closed loop circuit in which the spent cooling air is then discharged into the combustor 12 of the high spool. The cooling air must be increased in pressure to pass through the cooling circuit of the turbine parts and still have enough pressure to flow into the combustor 12. An intercooler 24 cools the compressed air and a boost compressor 25 driven by a motor 26 increases the pressure of the cooling air. a second intercooler 29 and a second boost compressor 30 driven by a second motor 31 can be used to increase the pressure of the spent cooling air prior to discharge into the combustor 12.
The cooling flow 34 and 35 enable a higher diffusion rate in the LPC diffuser 10 by restarting the boundary layer on the LPC diffuser 10 inner diameter (ID) flow path. The LPC diffuser 10 OD flow path loading is mitigated with zero slope flow path and OD strong LPC exit velocity profile. Cooling air duct 23 diffusion in the cooling flow diffuser 37 can be delayed to minimize blockage by the cooling air duct 23 inside the LPC-to-HPC duct. The bleed off compressed air from the bleeds 34 and 35 flows into a throat and then through a cooling flow diffuser 37 before entering the cooling air duct 23.
In both embodiments of
This invention was made with Government support under contract number DE-FE0023975 awarded by Department of Energy. The Government has certain rights in the invention.