Intercooled/Recuperated gas turbine systems provide high-efficiency and power density for naval propulsion. Current aero-derivative systems are capable of about 43% thermal efficiency in this configuration. With continued progress in gas-turbine materials and cooling technology, the possibility of further improving system performance by incorporation of gas-turbine reheat arises. A preliminary scan of this class of cycles is presented and compared with non-reheat intercooled/recuperated cycles at two levels of component technology. For conservative component technology, the reheat is found to provide very modest performance advantages. With advanced components and ceramic thermal barrier coatings, the reheat is found to offer potential for specific power improvements of up to 33% and for modest efficiency gains, on the order of one percentage point, while enabling turbine inlet temperatures well below those for the most efficient non-reheat cycles. The high-performance reheat systems, however, require reheat-combustor inlet temperatures beyond current practice.
The use of water-injection in the intercooler, together with an aftercooler and a water-injected evaporative-recuperator is found to produce very large gains in efficiency as well as specific power. This modification may be feasible for land-based systems, where it can compete favourably with combined cycles. Despite the difficulty of obtaining pure water for a shipboard propulsion system, those large gains may justify further studies of this system and of means to provide its water supply in marine applications.
Thermodynamics and Performance Projections for Intercooled/Reheat/Recuperated Gas Turbine Systems
