Numerical investigation of NOx reduction by inlet evaporative cooling in a gas turbine power plant

NOx emission from the gas turbine power plants is one of the crucial current environmental problems. Inlet air cooling of the gas turbine power plants is an efficient method for the NOx reduction. In this paper, the effect of evaporative cooling in the inlet of the gas turbine power plant on the thermal efficiency and NOx emission is numerically and thermodynamically investigated. For this purpose, Compressor and turbine have been simulated thermodynamically using Matlab code. Ansys Fluent 16 software has been used for numerical simulation of the combustion chamber. Four different humidity ratios (0, 0.25%, 50%, 75%) are considered for the inlet evaporative cooling. In this paper, combustion occurs in a diffusion type flame. Results show that the thermal efficiency increases 0.44% and NOx emission decreases significantly 33.5% in most humidity ratio.