Simulating a Steam Injection and Water Recovery Gas Turbine Cycle fuelled by Hydrogen
E. Jahilo (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
Arvind Gangoli Rao – Mentor (TU Delft - Flight Performance and Propulsion)
G. Eitelberg – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Flight Performance and Propulsion)
Feijia Yin – Mentor (TU Delft - Operations & Environment)
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Abstract
Increasing air traffic demand and new environmental sustainability requirements incentivise research into technologies that both increase fuel efficiency and reduce emissions, with the hydrogen steam injection and water recovery cycle showing potential to improve both. How to model such an engine in a numerical simulation tool and what the performance of the engine is at design and off-design conditions is investigated. Previous applications of steam injection are limited to ground-based turbines and hydrogen is not in use on aircraft engines, with their combination being novel and with limited public research. An engine model is built with the Numerical Propulsion System Simulation software and engine parameters studied in order to design a fully water self-sufficient engine at the top of climb design point. A detailed heat exchanger model is developed in order to accurately size and predict the performance of evaporators and condensers which are identified as critical components in the cycle. Water self-sufficiency is reached in both top of climb and cruise while a significant deficit at take off necessitates carrying water for take off and part of climb. An improvement in fuel efficiency is found over a baseline hydrogen engine but the required heat transfer area of the air-cooled exhaust condenser is significantly large, rendering the cycle infeasible. Harnessing the potential of the cycle may be possible with drastic redesign of the heat exchanger or alterations to the cycle architecture.