Applied Energy 147 (2015) 4048

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Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

Enhancing micro gas turbine performance in hot climates through inlet

air cooling vapour compression technique
G. Comodi a, M. Renzi b,, F. Caresana a, L. Pelagalli a
a
b

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale e Scienze Matematiche, Universit Politecnica delle Marche, via Brecce Bianche, 60131 Ancona, Italy
Libera Universit di Bolzano, Facolt di Scienze e Tecnologie, piazza Universit, 5, 39100 Bolzano, Italy

h i g h l i g h t s

g r a p h i c a l a b s t r a c t

 A test bench has been designed to test

direct expansion IAC technique to a

MGT.
 The COP of the chiller ranged between
2.2 and 2.5.
 Electric power gain depends on
ambient conditions and it reached up
to 8.5%.
 Electric efciency gain depends on
ambient conditions and it reached up
to 1.6%.
 Performance gains are higher in drier
climates and with more performing
chillers.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 26 June 2014
Received in revised form 1 February 2015
Accepted 20 February 2015

Keywords:
Micro turbines
Inlet air cooling
Distributed generation
Electrical efciency
Hot climates
Direct expansion

a b s t r a c t
Microturbines (MGTs) are power generation devices showing very interesting performance in terms of
low environmental impact, high-grade waste heat and very low maintenance cost. One of the main issues
that affect the output of MGTs is their strong sensibility to inlet air temperature. Both in literature and in
practical applications, several solutions have been applied to control the inlet air conditions and reduce
the sensibility of this kind of machines to ambient conditions. One of the most interesting technology is
the refrigerating vapour compression technique. This solution has already been used for medium/large
GTs, but there are very limited inlet air cooling applications on MGTs and few experimental data are
documented. This paper describes a test bench that has been designed to apply the direct vapour expansion technique to a 100 kWe MGT and reports the power and efciency augmentation of the machine
when operating in hot summer days.
The chiller was designed to treat the MGTs air ow rate under specic working conditions and cool the
inlet air temperature down to 15 C. Thanks to the reduction of the inlet air temperature, the MGT
showed a benet in terms of electric power gain up to 8% with respect to the nominal power output
in ISO conditions while the electric efciency increased by 1.5%. Results indicate that an almost linear
trend can be obtained both in the electric power increase and in the electric efciency increase as a
function of the inlet air temperature when the chiller operates under nominal working conditions.

Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0471 017816; fax: +39 0471 017009.
E-mail addresses: g.comodi@univpm.it (G. Comodi), massimiliano.renzi@unibz.it
(M. Renzi), f.caresana@univpm.it (F. Caresana), l.pelagalli@univpm.it (L. Pelagalli).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2015.02.076
0306-2619/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

G. Comodi et al. / Applied Energy 147 (2015) 4048

41

When the IAC device operates at a higher temperature or a higher humidity than the design one, the gain
is limited; in some working conditions with high relative humidity, most of the benecial effect can even
be lost.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Among the energy production devices that can be adopted in
the distributed generation (DG) market, Microturbines (MGTs)
could play a signicant role [14] since their electric output varies
from 25 kW to 500 kW, which is a particularly interesting range for
cogeneration applications in the service sector, households and
small industry. Even if the electric efciency of MGTs is generally
smaller than that of internal combustion engines [5,6] they can
be protably applied in DG, thanks to their high power density,
low pollutants concentration, low operation and maintenance
(O&M) costs and multi fuel capability [7]. A signicant limitation
on the application of MGTs, especially in hot climates, is the strong
dependence of their performance, namely the electric output and
the electric efciency, on the ambient conditions, being the hot
ambient temperature the most affecting parameter. This characteristic, that is also recorded for larger GT, does not allow to exploit
the full potential of these machines which are normally rated in
ISO conditions (15 C, 101.3 kPa, 60% RH) [8].
Literature is rich of documents reporting the inuence of atmospheric conditions on industrial scale GTs performance. Several
works evaluated the performance loss of these machines in hot climates: depending on the size and the characteristics of the GT, the
electric power output can decrease by 0.50.9%/C [911]; even
greater losses are recorded for GTs of smaller capacities as reported
in a paper by Mohanty [12]. Amell and Cadavid [13] also investigated this issue and they attributed this behavior of smaller GTs
not only to the air density reduction with higher ambient temperature but also to a volumetric ow reduction.
As for MGTs, the effect of the inlet air temperature on their
performance has been investigated in a limited number of works
[1418]. This specic problem was already approached by the
authors of this paper: we designed a specic test bench to evaluate
the cogeneration performance of MGTs [19] and we adopted
the articial neural networks (ANNs) methodology [20] as well as
analytical models [21] to quantify the effect of ambient conditions
on the output of the machine. Air pressure and relative humidity do
not affect signicantly the performance of the machine while air
temperature strongly affects both the electric output and the electric efciency. In numerical terms, a reduction of about 1.22%/C for
the electric power and a reduction of about 0.51%/C for the electric
efciency was assessed for Turbec100 kWe MGT if compared to the
ISO ratings.
Since the performance of GTs is so sensible to ambient temperature variations, the so-called Inlet Air Cooling (IAC) techniques
have been studied and applied to reduce its impact. There are several works in literature that presented a series of solutions and the
benecial results that can be obtained by reducing the compressor
inlet air temperature.
A work by Al-Ibrahim et al. [22] describes the most used IAC
techniques that can be applied to enhance the performance of
GTs: (i) wetted media evaporative cooling; (ii) high-pressure
fogging; (iii) absorption chiller cooling using the GTs exhaust
gas; (iv) and refrigerative vapour compression cooling.
In some cases, it is also possible to have a combination of the
abovementioned technologies and obtain hybrid solutions in order
to use the most performing one depending on the environmental
conditions. A study by Al-Ansary et al. [23] showed that, combining

vapour compression cooling and fogging technologies, it is possible

to meet the requirements of both dry and humid climates and optimize the effectiveness of the IAC technique. Of course a drawback
of this solution is that the initial cost and the complexity of the
plant are increased.
Among all the possible IAC technologies, the high-pressure fogging system shows a good compromise in terms or effectiveness,
pay-back period and application simplicity [24]. It is particularly
suitable for hot and dry climates where it is possible to exploit
maximally the advantage of the adiabatic saturation. On the other
hand, it is not possible to control the temperature of the air downstream the fogging nozzles as it is limited by the wet bulb temperature of the ambient air. The characteristics of this technology
have been analyzed in several works. Sanaye [25] developed an
analytical approach to evaluate the compressor map working point
when high-pressure fogging is applied to GTs and combined cycle
plants: a signicant enhancement in the net power output was
reported as well as a general trend of the compressor operating
point towards the surge line. Besides the inlet fogging upstream
the compressor, Roumeliotis [26] also studied the water/steam
injection in the combustor and applied to several commercial
GTs showing results on both performance augmentation and
engine operability. As regards the Brayton regenerated cycles,
Kim [27] reported on the chance of adopting the fogging technique
to enhance the performance of low-compression ratio GTs.
As regards the absorption cooling technique, the chance of
adopting an absorption chiller fed by the GTs exhaust to treat
the inlet air of the gas compressor was investigated by Najjar
[28]. Khaliq [29] conducted an energetic and exergy analysis of
an absorption inlet cooling cogeneration plant with evaporative
after cooling showing signicant advantages with respect to the
original basic cycle. Popli et al. [30] compared the positive effect
of evaporative cooling and absorption chiller to a GT installed in
an oil and gas installation in Abu Dhabi. IAC techniques are also
applied to more complex combined cycles where the exhaust of
the GT are used to feed a bottoming steam cycle: Yang [31] developed an analytical method to evaluate the inuence of fogging and
absorption cooling techniques on the performance of a combined
cycle plant; he also suggested a range of ambient air temperature
and humidity where the IAC technologies can be favorably applied.
With regard to vapour compression techniques, a specic work
was carried out by Chacartegui [32] that evaluated the energetic
and economic advantage of applying direct expansion cooling to
several commercial cogeneration GTs. Mohapatra [33] compared
the positive effect of vapour compression and vapour absorption
chillers applied to a combined cycle plant, also evaluating the effect
of ambient humidity on the performance of the IAC techniques.
Besides the theoretical evaluations of the benets of the application of the above mentioned solutions, IAC techniques are increasingly applied in many installations, especially in hot climates. Their
application to commercial GTs has been investigated by Kitchen
et al. [34] who also calculated the achievable capacity increase; a
detailed discussion of the available cooling techniques and the
main advantages and drawbacks of each of them were discussed
by Giourof [35], De Lucia et al. [36], ASHRAE [37], and Anderpont
[38]; nally, a design guide was proposed by Stewart [39].
Another interesting solution to enhance MGT output is hot
water or steam injection in the combustion chamber, even though

42

G. Comodi et al. / Applied Energy 147 (2015) 4048

this technique does not entail the treatment of the inlet air. Lee
et al. [40] studied injection of hot water or steam in a 30 kWe
MGT for CHP applications. Steam is produced by recovering the
heat content of the exhaust and simulations of the machine performance are evaluated in the case of injection before the recuperator
or before the combustion chamber: in both cases the authors
reported signicant performance improvements.
Summarizing the performance gain achieved by the above mentioned IAC techniques, the electric power augmentation achieved
by using the evaporative cooling technology is in the range of
few percentage points (maximum 5%); as regards the high pressure
fogging the power output increase ranges between 5% and 10%
depending on the inlet ambient humidity, and thus on the capacity
of reducing the inlet air temperature. As regards absorption cooling
and vapour compression cooling the electric power gain can be
over 20% when the ambient conditions are particularly favorable
as it is possible to reduce sensibly the compressor inlet air temperature even below the wet bulb temperature (even down to a
few degrees over 0 C). Anyhow, also in this case ambient humidity
plays a signicant role as in humid climates most of the thermal
power from the chiller is used to abate the latent heat with only
a minor benet in terms of GT electric output.
While IAC techniques have been widely applied in large sized
GT, there is a lack of experience in the application of these techniques to MGTs. In a previous paper [41] the authors of this work
have already described the application of the fogging technique to
a Turbec T100 HP MGT, demonstrating very good performance
improvements (over 10%), even though the power output enhancement is strongly dependent on the ambient conditions, namely air
humidity.
In this work, the direct expansion mechanical vapour compression technology is adopted to treat the process air of the same type
of MGT in order to reduce the sensitivity of the machines performance to the ambient conditions. This technology was chosen
since it shows better energy recovery performance with respect
to indirect expansion systems and because it allows to adjust the
temperature at the inlet of the MGT with a simple retrotted control, independently of ambient conditions. While the evaporation
techniques are restricted by the wet bulb temperature, vapour
compression machines can also reach lower temperatures with
the only limitation of the maximum chiller capacity.
The aims of the work are to: (i) describe the test bench
developed to apply the direct expansion vapour compression IAC
technology to a 100 kWe MGT; (ii) report the experimental results
on the performance of the machine when operating in hot ambient
temperature with the IAC; (iii) describe the advantages of this
technology in terms of electric power and electric efciency gain
and thus fulll the lack of relevant scientic literature in the application of the direct expansion vapour compression technology to
MGTs.
The paper is organized as follows: in Section 2 the MGT under
analysis is presented; Section 3 reports the description of the
experimental setup and the design of the IAC system; Section 4
illustrates the results of the test campaign; nally Section 5 reports
the concluding remarks.

2. Description of the MGT

The machine that is used in this work to study the effect of the
IAC vapour compression technique is a TurbecT100 HP microturbine. The thermodynamic cycle that is operated by the machine
is a regenerative Bryton cycle having a compression ratio of about
4.5. In cogeneration conguration, downstream the regenerator,
the machine is equipped with a heat exchanger that recovers the
thermal power of the exhausts. The turbine and the compressor

are radial machines mounted on a single shaft with the electric

generator. Since the MGT operates at very high rotational speed
for the small dimension of the radial machines, electricity is
produced at a voltage and at a frequency that are different from
the standards of the grid. An electronic conversion system is then
able to convert the generated electricity to the correct values
required by the electric grid.
As already mentioned, a test bed has been designed and
described by the authors of the present paper with the aim to
evaluate the performance of the MGT in several working conditions [19]. The focus of the work was to evaluate the thermal
and the electric output of the machine and to calculate the
corresponding overall efciency. This test bench has been used also
to study the effect of the IAC technique on the performance of the
MGT as it will be described in the next paragraph.
3. The vapour compression chiller and the test bench
The vapour compression machine, a traditional industrial
chiller that uses R507 as working uid, was designed to reach an
air temperature of about 15C at the compressors inlet, which
represents the nominal working condition of the MGT. In order
to reduce the electric power consumption of the system inverters
were installed on the compressor and the condenser cooling fan.
The rst permits to regulate the cooling capacity and thus the air
temperature at the MGT inlet by varying the refrigerant mass ow
rate, the second is used to regulate the compressor discharge pressure by varying the fan speed. The expansion valve is electronically
driven.
3.1. Separation of the air ow
In the T100 microturbine a single duct supply the total inlet air
ow which is about 1.6 kg/s. Once entered in the MGT cabinet, half
of the air ow is sucked by the compressor and it is used as the
working uid of the gas turbine while the remaining part is used
to cool down the auxiliary systems. As a consequence, in order to
apply the IAC technique to this MGT, it is necessary to split the
two air ows so that only the air that actually enters the compressor
is cooled down. To achieve this goal in the T100 MGT, a physical
separation of the two air ows is realized by inserting a horizontal
partition wall that separates the upper area of the cabin, that faces
the inlet cone of the compressor, from the lower one where the
auxiliaries cooling devices are located. In order to grant a sufcient
cooling for the auxiliaries, new openings were realized in the lower
part of the casing to facilitate the heat dissipation. Thanks to this
minimal modications of the system, the two air streams enter
the MGT unit via two separate channels, thus allowing to operate
the IAC only in the duct that brings the working air to the
compressor.
3.2. Design of the vapour compression system installed in the test
bench
The design of the vapour compression chiller was accomplished
considering the refrigeration capacity needed to take the nominal
_ air = 0.8kg/s, from a reference ambient
MGT working air ow rate, m
condition of 30 C and 60% R.H., to the set-point condition of 15 C
(nominal working temperature of the MGT) and 85% R.H. In these
conditions
the
air
specic
enthalpy
changes
from
hamb air 71:8 kJ=kg to hcool air 31:9 kJ=kg.
The correspondent required cooling capacity of the evaporator
is then calculated as:

_ air hamb
Pc m

air

 hcool

yielding about 27 kW.

air

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G. Comodi et al. / Applied Energy 147 (2015) 4048

Table 1
Main chiller components and their characteristics.
Component

Manufacturer and model

Characteristics

Compressor
Air condenser
Evaporator
Liquid receiver
Dry lter
Thermal expansion valve

Bitzer 4DC-7.2Y
Alfa Laval ACS-502-C
KFL P35E
FRIGOMEC 11
Carly DCY 165
Danfoss EVR10-32F-1214

power: 12 kW with inverter

with 2.2 kWe inverter controlled cooling fans
working pressure: 26 bar
Volume: 11 l
Electronically driven

(a)

(b)

Fig. 1. (a) Modied intake duct scheme and (b) direct expansion evaporator.

The design conditions were chosen in order to make the MGT

work in nominal conditions for most of the days of a typical
meteorological year in the location where the machine is installed.
In fact, over-sizing the chiller with respect to the abovementioned
conditions would be unprotable and useful only in few days each
year. In addition, the only drawback of a slight under-sizing of the
chiller when the ambient temperature or ambient humidity
exceeds the design parameters is that the MGTs inlet temperature
eventually raises by a few degrees with respect to the chiller
design conditions; this anyhow grants a signicant recovery of
the electric power loss and it might occur only few days a year.
As regards the practical realization of the chiller, the compressor, the condenser, the liquid receiver, the dryer lter and the thermal expansion valve are all enclosed in a casing; the characteristics
of the main components of the chiller are reported in Table 1. The
compressor has a nominal maximum electric power of 12 kWe.
The lamination valve is electronically driven and retrotted by
the temperature of the refrigerated air in the MGTs inlet duct.
The cooling uid is then sent to the evaporation unit that is located
separately from the rest of the system, inside the MGTs air suction
channel.
The condensed water on the evaporator heat exchanger is
removed by means of a specic system that will be described in
the next paragraph.

3.3. Modied intake duct for the evaporation heat exchanger and the
measurement instruments

Table 2
Measuring instruments used in the test bench.
Instrument

Typology

Accuracy

Air temperature
and humidity
Pressure drop
Fuel ow rate

SIEMENS QFM3171

Temperature: 0.8 K
Humidity: 2% R.H.
0.40%
0.35%

HUBA CONTROL 692

FLUENT ELITE Micro Motion

square section (610  610 mm) in which the evaporator heat

exchanger and the measuring probes are installed. In order to
evaluate the condition of the air before and after the cooling treatment, temperature and relative humidity probes are installed as
reported in Fig. 1a. In between the inlet section of the air duct
and the inlet section of the MGT a differential pressure device
has also been installed to evaluate the overall pressure losses
due to the addition of the cooling system. The characteristics and
the accuracy of the installed probes are reported in Table 2.
The evaporator (see Fig. 1b) consists of a battery having copper
pipes and aluminum ns and it is provided with a droplet wave
separator; the condensate is removed by gravity through a drain
pipe.
All the other quantities required to evaluate the performance of
the MGT, such as the electric power output, the fuel ow and the
electric efciency of the machine are measured and acquired using
the same procedure as the one reported in a previous paper of the
authors [19].
4. Results and discussion

In order to perform the experimental measurements, the intake

duct for the air elaborated by the compressor was modied and
designed to embed the chillers evaporator system and the measuring apparatus. Fig. 1a shows the sketch of the modied intake duct
with the evaporation heat exchanger and the measuring apparatus; Fig. 1b shows a picture of the chiller evaporator installed
inside the inlet air duct.
The lter at the inlet of the fresh air duct is required to remove
the coarse dust particles present in the intake air. The duct has a

The experimental data were collected during selected hot summer days when the operation of the MGT is penalized by the high
ambient temperature. The level of relative humidity in the location
where the test bench has been realized during the test days ranged
between 45% and 70% while ambient temperature ranged between
23 C and 34 C. This means that some of the tests were performed
with ambient conditions that were more severe (higher temperature and higher humidity) with respect to the design conditions

44

G. Comodi et al. / Applied Energy 147 (2015) 4048

35

90

30
80

25

70
60

20

50

15

40
30

10

20

Evaporator thermal power [kW]

Air temperature [C] / Air humidity [%]

100

10
0
14:15

Air temperature
before the HE
Air tempearture
after the HE
Air humidity
before the HE
Air humidity after
the HE
Direct expansion
HE thermal power

0
14:29

14:44

14:58

15:12

Time
Fig. 2. Trend of the temperature and the relative humidity upstream and downstream the evaporator heat exchanger (HE) for a selected test day (initial relative humidity
53%).

Air temperature [C] / Air humidity [%]

90

30

80

25

70
60

20

50

15

40
30

10

20

5
10
0
15:57

Evaporator thermal power [kW]

35

100

Air temperature
before the HE
Air tempearture
after the HE
Air humidity
before the HE
Air humidity after
the HE
Direct expansion
HE thermal power

0
16:00

16:03

16:05

16:08

Time
Fig. 3. Trend of the temperature and the relative humidity upstream and downstream the evaporator (initial relative humidity 45%).

of the chiller. In the following data are reported both for on-design
and off-design working conditions.
During the tests, the pressure drop across the evaporator varied
from 250 and 300 Pa, with a negligible effect on the machine performance [20].
Fig. 2 reports the trend of data measured by the air temperature
and air humidity probes in a selected test day. Data are reported
starting from few minutes before activating the chiller and
throughout all the steady operation of both the chiller and the
MGT. The graph clearly shows that when the IAC system operates,
temperature drops down to 15 C starting from 28 C: the blue1
line refers to the air temperature before the evaporator heat exchanger (HE) and the red line is the temperature after it. Downstream the
heat exchanger, relative humidity rises to 8588% starting from a
value of about 5254% (black and purple line respectively). The air
temperature reduction is effective when an approximate steadystate working condition is reached. The green line indicates the thermal power that is extracted by the evaporator in the inlet air duct,

1
For interpretation of color in Figs. 27, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.

both in terms of sensible and latent heat; the peak extracted thermal
power is about 20 kW.
A similar trend is also indicated in Fig. 3 that reports the same
acquired quantities in another selected test day. In this case ambient humidity was lower, about 45%, and the ambient temperature
was higher (about 33 C). The evaporator extracts a maximum of
about 27 kW of thermal power from the inlet air which reaches a
temperature of 16.5 C which is slightly higher than the target
one. As the ambient humidity has a signicant weight on the value
of the specic enthalpy, it is possible to see that in a dry climate the
thermal power required to cool down the stream of air is lower
than the previous case where the humidity was higher.
In Fig. 4, besides the trend of the temperature upstream and
downstream the evaporator (red and blue lines respectively), the
value of the power output of the MGT is depicted for the same test
of Fig. 2. The graph reports the actual power produced by the MGT
during the tests with the IAC system operating (dark blue line) and
the trend of the electric power of the machine without the application IAC technique (purple line). This latter value was evaluated
using the articial neural network (ANN) methodology that has
already been successfully applied by the authors of the present
paper in the study of this MGT [20]. By means of this technique,

45

100

50

90

45

80

40

70

35

60

30

50

25

40

20

30

15

20

10

10

14:18

14:32

14:47

Electric power
without IAC
Net electric
power with IAC
Chiller electric
consumption
Air tempearture
after the HE
Air tempearture
before the HE

MGT power
with IAC

Air temperature [C]

Electric power [kW]

G. Comodi et al. / Applied Energy 147 (2015) 4048

15:01

Time
Fig. 4. Inlet air temperature, MGT output and chiller power consumption with and without the IAC (initial humidity 53%).

100

50

90

MGT power with

IAC

45
40

70
35

60
50

30

40

25

30
20

Air temperature [C]

Electric power [kW]

80

Electric power
without IAC
Net electric
power with IAC
Chiller electric
consumption
Air tempearture
after the HE

20
15

10
0

15:57

Air tempearture
before the HE

10

15:59

16:01

16:04
Time

16:06

16:08

16:10

Fig. 5. Inlet air temperature, MGT output and chiller power consumption with and without the IAC (initial humidity 45%).

the maximum electric power output of the machine, as well as its

electric efciency, can be calculated as a function of the inlet air
temperature, pressure and humidity and the machine load. In the
following sections of this paper, all the trends referring to the
machines performance without the IAC system will be evaluated
using this methodology and considering the air conditions collected by the probes installed upstream the evaporator. In addition,
in the graph in Fig. 4 the orange line indicates the electric power
consumption of the compression chiller, while the black line is
obtained as the net electric power output of the system (MGT
actual power output minus the chiller consumption). The electric
power gain obtained thanks to the application of the air treatment
is particularly signicant and it reaches values over 14 kWe. In
terms of net power output the gain is lower, due to the chiller consumption, and it can be evaluated in as much as 6 kWe. The trend
of the MGT output clearly follows the trend of the air temperature
reduction in the inlet duct. When the compression chiller is activated, the net power output has a decreasing threshold till the
steady state temperature condition is achieved in the inlet air.
Fig. 5 reports the same data and results corresponding to the
test day of Fig. 3 in which the value of the ambient temperature
was higher; the electric power consumption of the compression

chiller results to be higher and the net electric power augmentation is lower. Also in this case, the net electric power output
increases by 6 kWe with respect to the simple MGT without IAC
since both the chiller has a higher consumption and the MGT has
a higher power recovery.
All the presented data referring to the test days were collected
together in the graph in Fig. 6: the gains in terms of electric efciency and electric power output using the IAC system are presented. During the tests ambient temperature varied from a
minimum value of 22.5 C to a maximum value of 33.5 C. The blue
dots show the MGTs power output when the evaporation cooling
chiller was active; the red dots report the electric output of the
machine in absence of the IAC system. The rst outcome of the
results is that, while in absence of a cooling device the machines
electric output is strongly sensitive to ambient temperature, the
machine performance is almost constant when the evaporation
cooling is active; the only limitation is given by the capacity of
the evaporator to bring the inlet air to the nominal set-point value
of 15 C. Indeed, when ambient temperature and ambient humidity are higher than the design values (30 C and 60% respectively),
the chiller is no longer capable to cool down the air temperature
till the design set-point and the MGTs output shows a slight

46

G. Comodi et al. / Applied Energy 147 (2015) 4048

MGT electric power with IAC

MGT electric power without IAC

Chiller electric consumption

MGT electric efficiency with IAC

Electrtic Efficiency without cooling

100

34%

90

32%

80

30%

70
60

28%

50

26%

40
30

Efficiency

Electric power [kW]

110

24%

20

22%

10

20%

0
21

24

27

30

33

36

Ambient air temperature [C]

Fig. 6. Electric power, efciency and chiller consumption as a function of the ambient temperature.

10

14
12

Net electric power

gain

8
6

4
2

0
-2
-4

-6
-8

-10
-12

Efficiency gain [%]

Electric power gain [kW]

10

Net electric power

gain off-design
Net electric
efficiency gain
Net electric
efficiency gain offdesign

-2

-14
21

24

27

30

33

36

Ambient air temperature [C]

Fig. 7. Net electric power and efciency gain of the system as a function of the ambient temperature and for two values of the chillers COP.

reduction. Ambient humidity has a minor effect on the electric

output of the machine, as reported in [20] by the authors of the
present paper.
In order to compare the performance of the system in presence
or in absence of the cooling system, in Fig. 6 the green dots report
the electric consumption of the vapour compression chiller: in
general, it is possible to gure a linear increase of the electric consumption of the system with increasing ambient temperature; the
mean value of the COP ranged between 2.2 and 2.5 depending on
the working conditions (cooling uid evaporation temperature)
and the ambient temperature (condensing temperature), as it can
be noted by comparing Figs. 2 and 4, as well as Figs. 3 and 5.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that, in an evaporation cooling
device, a signicant part of the thermal power is required not only
to cool down the treated air (sensible heat) but also to condensate
the air humidity (latent heat). Therefore, in the graph it is possible
to identify a cluster of data (highlighted with a red circle) that refer
to a test day in which the ambient humidity was particularly high,
exceeding 60%. In this situation, even though the air temperature
downstream the evaporator is almost close to the set-point
temperature of 15 C, the consumption of the chiller results to be
signicantly higher with a direct impact on the system net output
in terms of electric power and electric efciency. This aspect is

clearly visible in the data series reporting the MGTs electric

efciency in Fig. 6. The purple dots indicate the MGTs electric
efciency when the cooling device is active while the black dots
refer to the net electric efciency, calculated on the basis of the
net electric power output of the system (difference of the MGTs
output and the chiller electric consumption) and the actual
machines fuel consumption. It is possible to conclude that
machines efciency is almost constant at 29% when the chiller
operates, mirroring the trend of the electric power output of the
MGT (blue dots). Only a minor reduction can be recorded at high
ambient temperature when the evaporator is not able to supply
the whole required cooling effect. On the contrary, the net efciency shows a much higher dispersion and it is also inuenced
by the electric consumption of the chiller. It is evident that, with
high ambient humidity, the IAC system requires a higher electric
power which reects on the net performance of the whole system.
In particular, the value of the net electric efciency ranges from a
maximum value of about 27.3% at low ambient temperature to a
minimum value of 24.2% at high ambient temperature and high
ambient humidity.
Finally, Fig. 7 reports both the electric power and the electric
efciency gains as a function of the ambient temperature for the
whole available set of experimental data. The grey and the light

G. Comodi et al. / Applied Energy 147 (2015) 4048

blue data points refer to IAC results carried out with the chiller
operating under the design conditions described in Section 3.2;
instead, the black and the dark blue dots refer to IAC results carried
out with the chiller operating under off-design conditions.
The net power increase (MGT power production minus the
chiller power consumption, grey dots) ranges between 0 and
8.5 kW depending on the ambient conditions, namely temperature
and humidity, while the electric efciency gain ranges between
0.3% and 1.6% (light blue dots). In particular, the lower the
ambient humidity, the higher the sensible thermal power that
can be extracted by the evaporator; therefore, for a given required
temperature reduction till the set point temperature of 15 C, the
chiller has a lower electric consumption and the IAC technique is
more performing. Conversely, when the ambient enthalpy is higher
than the design point (either given by higher temperature or ambient humidity), the temperature at the MGT inlet is higher than the
set point and the power increase is smaller, as well as the IAC technique effectiveness. This effect is reported in Fig. 7 with the black
dots data for the electric power gain and the dark blue dots data for
the electric efciency gain. These data points are highly dispersed
since the nal electric performance of the system depends on the
specic ambient parameters. Therefore, in those conditions the
electric output enhancement is signicantly reduced and the electric efciency gain can even be negative, down to 0.8%. Another
interesting remark can be deduced by the general trend of the
electric efciency gain: as soon as the chiller works under design
conditions and it is capable of cooling the air to the set point value,
it is possible to gure an increasing trend of the electric efciency
gain. On the contrary, when the system works in off-design conditions, the chiller continuously operates at its nominal maximum
electric consumption but it is not able to cool down the air till
15 C anymore. Therefore, the higher the ambient temperature or
the ambient humidity, the higher the MGTs inlet temperature;
as a consequence, the net electric efciency gain tends to decrease
with high ambient temperature.
On the basis of the reported data it is possible to sum up some
comments on the application of vapour compression cooling systems coupled with a 100 kWe MGT: (i) the advantage in terms of
both electric power gain and electric efciency gain is very small
if the temperature difference achieved with the IAC device is limited (for example when the air temperature is lower than 25 C
and the set-point temperature is 15 C); (ii) the level of the ambient air humidity strongly inuences the effectiveness of the IAC
system as a signicant part of the thermal power exchanged in
the evaporator is used to reduce the latent heat and it does not
result in an increase of the MGTs output; (iii) when the chiller
operates in off-design conditions, i.e. with higher temperature
and humidity with respect to the design ones, the temperature
downstream the evaporator is higher than the nominal one, the
electric output gain tends to atten and the electric efciency gain
decreases.

5. Conclusions
The performance of MGTs is particularly sensitive to the ambient conditions and hot inlet air temperature determines a signicant loss in terms of electric power output, even higher than
large sized GTs as documented in several works. The vapour compression IAC technology can be used to reduce the MGTs compressor inlet temperature and achieve material advantages in terms of
machine performance in hot and dry climates. This solution,
already proposed in large production plants, has never been
applied to MGTs. The paper describes the design and the operation
of a direct expansion IAC system that was applied to a 100 kWe
microturbine. The disposition and the dimensioning of the

47

evaporator of the chilling system were reported and the issues

arising from the necessity of separating the compressor working
uid air and the auxiliaries cooling air were discussed. The setpoint temperature of the air downstream the evaporator is set to
15 C which is the nominal working condition of the MGT.
Experimental data were collected during hot summer days with
ambient temperature ranging between 23 and 34 C and ambient
humidity ranging between 45% and 65%; in these conditions, the
direct expansion IAC system is particularly effective and it allows
to obtain remarkable advantages in terms of electric power output
and efciency, especially when the ambient humidity is lower.
The performance of the proposed system is documented and
the advantage in terms of inlet air temperature reduction is
reported. Specically, thanks to the evaporator enclosed in the
MGTs air inlet channel, a maximum temperature reduction of
about 16 C was achieved when the ambient temperature was particularly hot. The effect of the relative air humidity on the performance of the MGT with the IAC system is analyzed: when the
ambient humidity is high, a greater part of the evaporator cooling
power is required to condense the water content of the inlet air.
During the tests it was possible to register a net electric power augmentation up to 8.5% referred to the machines ISO condition output; also the net electric efciency gain showed a peak of 1.6%.
Obviously, these gures can be further raised if a chiller with
higher COP is adopted. The reported test bench data indicate that
an almost linear trend can be obtained both in the electric power
increase and in the electric efciency increase as a function of
the inlet air temperature when the chiller operates under nominal
working conditions. When the IAC device operates at higher temperature or humidity the gain is limited; in some working conditions with high relative humidity, most of the benecial effect
can be lost. Finally, the exibility of the described test bench will
allow to deepen the study on the performance augmentation of
MGTs by regulating the operating parameters of the IAC system
depending on the ambient conditions.

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