Industrial gas turbine performance prediction and improvement – a case study

Abstract The gas turbines (GTs), model M3142R/GE MS 3002, equipping the natural gas compression and crude oil pumping stations of SONATRACH’s pipeline transport of hydrocarbons activity are robust despite their dilapidation and state of service, but mediocre in terms of energy efficiency and power output. According to the manufacturer, for temperatures ranging from 15 to 47 °C, the efficiency of these machines drops from 26.78 to 25.03 % and their power drops from 11.29 to 8.9191 MW. It should be noted, however, that the number of these turbines exceeds 80 units and that their operation dates from 1974. The intention of this paper is to improve the gas turbine performance, mainly the efficiency and shaft power, by an evaporative cooling process of the compressor intake air. Besides, it is proposed to lower the upper limit power in periods of high temperatures to reduce gas consumption. To achieve these objectives, a mathematical model was implemented under Matlab R16, which reproduced the real behavior of these machines. It follows that this simulation made it possible to highlight relevant gains in terms of power and efficiency of the order of 1.361 MW and 3.4 % at a temperature of 47 °C.