2015 8th International Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Design

Modeling Research on a Solar Tower Thermal Collection-Natural Gas Turbine Power

Generation System

Chang Xu1, Ying Guo2

1. College of Energy and Electrical Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, China
2. Henan Electric Power Survey & Design Institute, Zhengzhou, China
Email: zhuifengxu@163.com, gyheny@163.com

Abstract—Solar tower-gas turbine power generation system

could push forward the commercialization process of solar
energy utilization due to its lower cost, lower risk of research
and development as well its ability to overcome the random
and wave character issues. In order to study the heat transfer
and power transformation characters of solar tower-gas
turbine power system and the influences of parameters on the
system performances, component models of the heat transfer
and power transformation were developed for the compression
chamber, foam ceramics receiver, combustion chamber and
gas turbine. The models were simulated by Matlab software to
analyze the influences of pressure ratio, foam ceramics
receiver surface area and inlet air temperature on the systems.
The research can provide some references for the design and
operation of the system.

Keywords- solar tower-gas turbine; foam ceramics; receiver;

porosity; model
I. INTRODUCTION
The regular solar thermal power generation system has to
be operated with thermal storage system due to the random
and wave character issues of the sun light. So the investment
and operating costs are increased. The low working
temperature of heat storage medium (not to exceed 600 K) [1]
also directly limits the overall efficiency of power generation
systems. A solar tower-gas turbine power generation system
is displayed in Figure 1. This system can realize generate
supplementary electricity without a heat storage system, and
the heat receiver temperature is high[2]. Therefore, this
system power is more efficient, more economical and more
stable compared with the regular solar thermal system.
Air heat receiver has become a hot research field of solar
thermal power generation in recent years due to its working
medium without pollution, easy to obtain, non-corrosive,
incombustible and easy to treat. Within the German program
PHOEBUS, the test of volumetric absorber is completed,
which the temperature of the heated air reaches 700嘙C[3]. In
Weizmann Institute, a tube heat receiver , a pin heat receiver
and a ladder heat receiver have been successfully
developed[4-6]. The pin heat receiver has been applied in the
solar power generation system of 70 kW in Nanjing[7]. The
outlet temperature is a main indicator of the receiver and
affects directly the system efficiency. As a porous medium,
the silicon carbide foam ceramic has many advantages such
as good thermal conductivity, small expansion coefficient
Figure 1. Structure of system
and anti-oxidation, which is made to the heat receiver to
obtain high temperature air. In Germany program SOLAIR
and the project of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hohai
University, the solar air heat receiver has been successfully
applied[8] .
Recently, the research of the solar tower-gas turbine
power generation system is focused on the equipments and
the theory of heat transfer under condition of high energy
flux density which is collected by solar concentrator. The
performance of solar thermal power system is generally
studied qualitatively. In this paper, the Brayton cycle in foam
ceramics receiver of solar tower is set as a study object. The
model of energy transfer and heat power conversion in the
process of electricity generating is built, and on this basis,
the quantitative research of the effects of the structural
parameters and operating parameters on the performance of
thermal power generation system is completed.
II. SYSTEM MODELING
The Figure.1 shows the Brayton thermodynamic cycle.
Firstly, the air is compressed in the compressor and the
temperature of air increases at the same time. Secondly, the
air absorbs solar energy in the foam ceramic receiver. Then it
burns in the combustion chamber and releases the chemical
energy. Finally, it works in the turbine while expanding and
its temperature decreases. The exhaust air can be utilized of

978-1-4673-9587-8/15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE 441

DOI 10.1109/ISCID.2015.160

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waste heat, or be released directly to atmosphere and this
paper studies the latter condition. When the radiation does
not reach the design value, the complementary system can
provide constant power output by increasing the natural gas
supply. The air enters directly into the combustion chamber
from the compressor.
The common methods to modeling the compressor, the
combustion chamber and the turbine contain the formula
method, the thermodynamic table method and the curve
method[9]. Among them, the thermodynamic table method is
highly related to the turbine selected so it’s not a universal
method. The curve method uses the compressor compression
process curve and the combustion chamber combustion
process curve to do the calculation. It’s simple but it needs to
read the figure. So this method is not suitable for computer
programming. The formula method is selected in this paper
to modeling the compressor, the combustion chamber and
the turbine. At first the process is regarded as the ideal
process, then the actual output is calculated combining with
actual operation efficiency in the working condition [10].
A. Compressor model
The process of compressing air is considered an adiabatic
and isentropic process. Its model is:
V1 = Vin C 1 k (1)
T1s = Tin C k −1 k (2)
With V1 is the exhaust volume flow of compressor; Vin is
the inlet volume flow of compressor; C is the compression
ratio, which equals 20 now; k is air adiabatic coefficient and
k = 1.4; T1s is temperature of the exhaust air after isentropic
compression process; Tin is inlet air temperature of the
compressor and Tin = 288 K in this paper.
The isentropic efficiency of this type of compressor
under this flow and pressure ratio is present by η a , (3) and
(4) fix the actual outlet temperature of compressor T1 and the
power consumption Wa [11]:
T1 = (T1s − Tin ) η a +Tin
(3)
Wa = C pairα air nair (T1 − Tin )
With η a equals 85%; nair is the amount of substance of air
which is consumed in the full combustion process of natural
gas; aair is the excess air coefficient and the design value is 4;
Cpair is the average isobaric heat capacity of air in the
compressor and at the average temperature of the
compressor, Cpair=30.245 J/(mol·K).
The outlet pressure of compressor, P1 is :
P1 = Pin × C × (1 − ξ a ) (5)
With Pin is inlet pressure of compressor and is 101325
Pa, ξ a is the inlet pressure loss of compressor and it is 1%.
B. Receiver model
The foam ceramic receiver absorbs the solar radiation on
surface and transfer inside. The convection happens between
the solid skeleton inside and the air so the air pass through is
heated. The heat and mass transfer model can be simplified
as a one - dimensional model[8].
1) Energy equation
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Because this article need to calculate the temperature
field of the air heated by foam ceramic along the flow
direction, the local thermal equilibrium equation must be
used[13]. Therefore these hypothesis are made on the porous
media: isotropic, regardless of the pressure doing work and
the radiative heat transfer in the internal air. The established
energy equation is shown below.
The energy equation on gas phase and solid phase are:
∂ ( c f ρ f T f u ) ∂x = λ f ,eff ∂ 2Ts ∂x 2 + hv (Ts − T f ) (6)
λs ,eff ∂ 2Ts ∂x 2 − hv (Ts − T f ) = 0 (7)
With cf is the heat capacity of the gas; ρ f is the gas
density in foam ceramics; Tf is the gas temperature; u is the
inlet velocity; Ts is the temperature of porous media. λ f , eff is
the effective thermal conductivity of gas, λs ,eff is the
effective thermal conductivity of solid, hv is the volume heat
transfer coefficient, which is used for the measure of the heat
transfer intensity between the air and the skeleton of porous
media and its unit is W/(K m3).
λ f ,eff = ελ f (8)
λs , eff = (1 − ε )λs (9)
With ε is the porosity, λ f is the coefficient of thermal
conductivity of fluid; λs is the coefficient of thermal
conductivity of solid.
hv = hsf α sf (10)
In order to get the calculation model of heat transfer
coefficient between the air and the surface of the solid
skeleton hsf and the specific surface area of per unit
volume α sf , this paper uses the least square method to fitting
the experiment data of [16] and gets the formula(11)-(13):
Nu = hsf d h λ f (11)
Nu = 29.1667n −ppi2.6727 Re0.1064 (12)
α sf = 35.7n 1.1461
ppi (13)
(4) With up is the velocity in the pore ; dh is the hydraulic
diameter; nppi is pore density of porous media.
2) Boundary conditions
The boundary conditions on the air entrance and exit of
foam ceramics are expressed as [8].
3) Pressure drop model
The reference [17], on the basis of Ergun formula,
studied the pressure drop of porous medium by experimental
method and numerical method and used the least squares
method to fit out a pressure drop formula more precise:
dp dx = (1039 − 1002ε ) μ f u s 2 + 0.5138ε −5.739 ρ f u 2 s (14)
C. Combustion chamber model
The combustion process is considered as a isobaric
process. The heat balance equation is obtained:
qgas ngasηb + C pgas ngasTgas + C p 2 nair T2
(15)
(
= C p 3 nCO2 + nH 2O + nO2 + nN2 T3 )
442
 qgas is the mole calorific value of fuel, ngas, nair, nCO2, nH2O,
nO2, nN2 are the mole flow rate of natural gas, air, CO2, water
vapor, O2 and N2, η b is the combustion efficiency which
equals 0.98 in this paper, T2, Tgas, T3 are the inlet air
temperature, the inlet gas temperature and the outlet flue gas
temperature of combustion chamber, Tgas equals 288 K, Cpgas,
Cp2, Cp3 are the isobaric heat capacity of gas, air and gas
exhausted from the combustion chamber.
V3 = (V2 + ngas RT3 P3 ) × T3 T2 (16)
P3 = P2 (1 − ξb ) (17)
V3 is the volume flow of the mixed gas exhausted from
combustion chamber. V2 is the volume flow of inlet air of
combustion chamber. P3 is the outlet pressure and P2 is the
inlet pressure of combustion chamber. ξ b is inlet pressure
loss coefficient of combustion chamber and equals1%.
D. Turbine model
The expansion process in turbine can be considered as a
adiabatic isentropic process:
V4 = V3π t1 ke (18)
T4 s = T3π t( e ) e
1− k k
(19)
With the V4 is the volume flow exhausted by turbine,
π t is the expansion ratio which is chosen as 19.60, ke is the
outlet gas temperature and the output power of turbine can be
calculated according to (18)-(21).
A. Influence of pressure ratio on the system
Efficiency of system is defined as:
η = (We − Wa ) ( q0 + qgas ngas ) (22)
The quantitative effect of pressure ratio on the efficiency
of system is shown in figure 2. The greater the pressure ratio,
the greater the power output and the system efficiency, but
the curve slope of pressure ratio and efficiency decreases
with the increase of pressure ratio. When the pressure ratio
increases from 11 to 14, the power output increases 46836 W
and the efficiency increases by 1.86%; when pressure
increases from 20 to 23, the power output increases 23139 W
and the efficiency increases by 0.92%. Therefore the
appropriate pressure ratio for the system must be in the range
of 20 to 23. The big pressure ratio condition not only has a
high requirement of resistance to high pressure for the
turbine and the combustion chamber but also need a lot of
series of compressor and turbine with a complicated
structure. By comprehensive consideration, the system
design pressure ratio is set to 20 in this paper.
28 0.8
Output Power
27 0.75
Efficiency

Output Power˄MW˅
System Efficiency(%)
26 0.7
adiabatic coefficient of the flue gas in turbine and ke is 1.32
25 0.65
in average temperature in the turbine, T4s is the gas exhausted
temperature after isentropic expansion. 24 0.6
Set the isentropic efficiency of compressor of this type is 23 0.55
0.85 under this flow rate and pressure ratio, the actual
22 0.5
temperature of flue gas exhausted by turbine and the quantity
of work can be calculated by (24) and (25)[11]. 11 14 17 20
Pressure Ratio
23

T4 = T3 − (T3 − T4 s )ηc (20)
We = C pc ngas (T3 − T4 s ) (21)
With T4 is the actual flue gas temperature on the exit of
turbine, Cpc is the heat capacity at constant pressure of the
mixed gas in the turbine.
III. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Considering the present status of the solar heat absorber
and the gas turbine technology, the main parameters of
system in this paper are as follows: the radiation power
received by the heat receiver is 1 MW; the foam ceramic
porosity of receiver is 90%; the area of receiver is 1.5 m2
except in the discussion of the effects of receiver area on the
system; the flow rate of gas is 0.0272 kg/s; the temperature,
pressure and volume flow of the outlet air of compressor can
be calculated according to (1)-(3) and (5); the volumetric
Figure 2. Influence of pressure ratio on the efficiency of system
B. Influence of receiver surface area on the system
When the receiver surface area increases, the solar flux
decreases so is the thermal radiation loss on surface. At the
same time, when the receiver surface area increases, if the air
flow is not change, the air flow rate is reduced, so the heat
transfer intensity decreases. However, the influence of the air
flow decreases is greater than the influence of solar flux
density decreases, so the temperature of surface toward light
of receiver increases with the increase of the receiver surface
area. The increase of receiver surface area can make the
thermal radiation loss of the surface of solid skeleton reduce,
0.65 27.5
0.62 27.0
›•–‡ˆˆ‹…‹‡…›˄Ψ˅

heat transfer coefficient can be calculated according to (10)-

‘™‡”˄ሻ

0.59 26.5
(14) and formula of [16]; turning the (6), (7) into discrete
0.56 26.0
time and using the boundary conditions from [8], the
temperature field of the solid skeleton of receiver and the air 0.53
Thermal Radiation Loss
25.5
System Efficiency
can be calculated with the method of iteration on the grid 80
0.5 25.0
along the thickness direction; the outlet air pressure of
0.9 1.2 1.5 1.8 2.1
receiver can be calculated by (14); the inlet gas temperature $LUUHFHLYHU 6XUIDFH$UHD˄m 2˅
and pressure of turbine can be calculated by (15)-(17); the Figure 3. Influence of air receiver surface area on the system efficiency

443

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as shown in figure 3. The outlet air temperature of foam
ceramic increases and the efficiency of system improves.
C. Influence of inlet air temperature of compressor on the
system
The higher the inlet air temperature of compressor, the
bigger the compressor power consumption and the greater
the turbine work. The compressor power consumption, the
turbine work, the output power, and the system efficiency
under different inlet compressor temperatures are shown in
figure 4. The curve of compressor power consumption is
slightly up concave. It indicates that when the temperature
increases, the increment of compressor power consumption
also increases. The curve of turbine power is slightly up
convex. It indicates that when the temperature increases, the
increment of turbine power reduces. These two curves cause
the curve of output power and the curve of change system
efficiency are slightly up concave. According to the
calculation and analysis, compared the condition which the
mixed gas in the turbine, which can be calculated by the
compressor inlet temperature equals 288 K to 303 K, the
output power of system improves 20117 W and the system
efficiency increases 0.8%. The higher the inlet air
temperature, the more obvious cooling effect of using the
cooling technology and [18] has been proved this point.
1.6
1.4
Compressor Work
‘‡™‡U˄MW)
1.2 Turbine Work
Output Power
1 System Efficiency
0.8
0.6
273 278 283 288 293 298 303
‡’‡”ƒ–—”‡˄˅
Figure 4. Influence of inlet air temperature on the system efficiency
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the model of solar tower thermal collection-
natural gas turbine power generation system is built. After
researching its operation behaviors and analyzing the
influences of the pressure ratio, and the surface area of
receiver and inlet air temperature on the system performance,
the following conclusions are got:
If the pressure ratio is bigger, the system efficiency is
greater. However, with the increase of the pressure ratio, the
system efficiency improves more and more slowly.
When the surface area of receiver increases, the
temperature of surface toward light of receiver reduces, the
thermal radiation loss of surface of solid skeleton increases,
the temperature of the outlet air of foam ceramic decreases
and the system efficiency reduces.
If the inlet temperature of compressor is higher, the
power consumption of compressor and the turbine power are
more. But after comprehensive consideration, the system
efficiency decreases. If the system is located in the high
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temperature region, an air cooling system can be considered
at the air entrance of the gas turbine.
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