Abstract
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•An original concept of solar hybrid gas turbine is proposed.•Compressor ratio has stronger effect than solar field performance.•The higher the HTF temperature the higher is the SPHGT performance.•The higher the solar heat input the lower is the overall efficiency.
An innovative design for Solar Preheating Hybrid Gas Turbine (SPHGT) is originally introduced in this article. In the proposed concept, solar energy collected by a HTF solar field is used for preheating the compressed air. A thermodynamic and heat transfer models for each component have been developed and validated by comparing their predictions with experiments and pertinent laboratories codes. Two configurations have been considered for comparison to the reference cycle, i.e., one with solar-salt (SS-SP-GT) and another with Therminol VP-1 (VP1-SP-GT). We have carried out an analysis based on six performance indicators. The analysis has revealed that SPHGT is mainly affected by the compression ratio and the field operation temperatures. More in-depth, the compression ratio has stronger effect on the performance than solar field. At lower compression ratio (σc = 7), solar-to-electric efficiency of 17% has been obtained for VP1-SP-BC compared with 15% for SS-SP-BC. However, at higher compression ratio (σc = 23), the value of 22% is reachable by the latter configuration while the former (VP1-SP-BC) is becoming unfeasible due to the technical limits.