Comparative Analysis of Microturbines Performance Deterioration and Diagnostics

Abstract

The interest in microturbines and new distributed generation technologies is growing in the entire world because of the many potentially beneficial characteristics they can offer and the developments achieved so far. This paper investigates the performance and degradation effects of microturbines for electric power generation. Diagnostics investigation is also carried out to obtain optimal instrumentation sets for degradation faults. Here the capacity of the gas turbines analyzed is 29kW simple and regenerative cycles. The engine performance is also analyzed operating at constant and variable speed. To simulate the gas turbine performance and carry out the diagnostic analysis the software Pythia and Turbomatch, developed by Cranfield University, were used. In this paper the engines above are simulated at degraded conditions. The effects of the degradation in the compressor, turbine and recuperator on the performance of the engines were investigated. Despite of the improvement on performance achieved with regenerative cycle and variable speed operation the results show that the performance of variable speed microturbines is more sensitive to components degradation than constant speed engines. Also recuperator degradation has greater effect on variable speed than constant speed engines. Due the effects of degradation on each engine different diagnostic approaches are observed.

An Artificial Neural Network-Based Fault Diagnostics Approach for Hydrogen-Fueled Micro Gas Turbines

“…For micro gas turbines, there are a few studies relevant to performance-based fault diagnosis that considered radial compressor fouling, turbine erosion, and recuperator degradation phenomena, all considering NG-fueled scenarios. Gomes et al [27] reported that the presence of the recuperator in the MGT increases the sensitivity of the engine to compressor fouling and turbine erosion, especially in the variable-speed operating mode. They conducted a comparative study of several single and multiple faults, including fouling, erosion, foreign object damage (FOD), and recuperator deterioration.…”

“…The current study encompassed two kinds of component faults, i.e., compressor fouling and turbine corrosion. The reason for choosing fouling was mainly due to its high probability of occurrence in recuperated MGTs, as evidenced by the literature [27,30]. Turbine corrosion was selected because hydrogen fuel leads to an enhanced steam content that can cause higher heat transfer rates and corrosion as compared to an NG-fueled gas turbine [37].…”

“…[ 27,39] FC: flow capacity; Eff. : isentropic efficiency; CF: compressor fouling; TC: turbine corrosion; ↑: increasing; ↓: decreasing.…”

A Deep Learning Approach for Fault Diagnosis of Hydrogen Fueled Micro Gas Turbines

“…For micro gas turbines, there are a few studies relevant to performance-based fault diagnosis that considered radial compressor fouling, turbine erosion and recuperator degradation phenomena, all considering NG fueled scenarios. Gomes et al, (Gomes et al 2006) reported that presence of the recuperator in MGT increases the sensitivity of engine to compressor fouling and turbine erosion especially in variable speed operating mode. Hence, they conducted a comparative study of several single and multiple faults i.e., fouling, erosion, foreign object damage (FOD) and recuperator deterioration.…”

A methodology for identifying the most suitable measurements for engine level and component level gas path diagnostics of a micro gas turbine

“…Accordingly, some specific study on the MGT components damage is necessary to understand degradation effects in the engine behavior. 12,13,18,20 The investigation of Gomes et al 20 indicates that MGT shows higher sensitivity to component degradation. In Ref.…”