Investigation of how cooling the compressor inlet in a gas turbine cycle with thermal storage affects the cycle's thermal performance

The limiting of available energy resources prompted many researches to seek for the best investment of this resources as can as possible for best usage of this resources and converting them to electrical form with lowest possible cost.Electrical power plant working with gas turbine cycle condition closely related with ambient conditions, especially ambient temperature.As ambient temperature decrease, the thermal efficiency increase.This research aims to study the effect of cooling the air entering the compressor by a thermal ice tank that is charged (freezing and cooling the ice) at night by a compression refrigeration cycle due to the presence of an energy surplus from the plants and investing it during the day in cooling the air entering the compressor on the thermal performance of the plants and studying the economic feasibility of this addition in gas turbine power plants.The study focused in the current research on determining the optimal operational parameters that achieve the best thermal efficiency and the lowest possible operating cost through saving the value of the fuel cost added to the plants in order to obtain the same capacity.The study was conducted on the Jandar station in the Syrian city of Homs with a nominal capacity of 100 MW.The study showed an increase in the value of the thermal efficiency when cooling the air by means of a thermal ice tank by 3.5% and an exergy efficiency by 1.96%, while the operating cost decreased by 0.23% as a result of a decrease in the cost of the fuel consumed by 3.5%.The study was conduct by EES (Engineering Equation Solver) software version 9.9.