Performance Improvement of a Gas Turbine Air Intake System for Reduction of Pressure Loss and Distortion of Inlet Flow to the Compressor Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Air intake system of a 160 MW gas turbine cycle has been simulated using computational fluid dynamic. Fluent software is used to solve the continuity and momentum conservation equations.  The temperature effect in anti-icing system has been neglected.  According to the large dimension of the Intake body, the appropriate kind of mesh has been selected in every section and element sizes are tuned with parameters gradient. The first goal of this study is to suggest a way to reduce the pressure loss by accurate calculation of the flow parameters in all sections of the air intake system. Vortex as an effective source in pressure loss assessment has been studied locally in various part of the system. Results show that some vortex has been created in the corner of the filter house. Elimination of these vortexes can reduce the pressure loss and optimize the energy recovering from fuel. One of the important parameter that has high effect on the compressor efficiency is the pressure distortion of the inlet flow. In current study four case studies for transition piece has been suggested and the best one has been selected.