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High turn-down operating of heavy-duty gas turbines in modern Combined Cycle Plants requires a highly efficient secondary air system to ensure the proper supply of cooling and sealing air. Thus, accurate performance prediction of secondary flows in the complete range of operating conditions is crucial. The paper gives an overview of the secondary air system of Ansaldo F-class AEx4.3A gas turbines. Focus of the work is a procedure to calculate the cooling flows, which allows investigating both the interaction between cooled rows and additional secondary flows (sealing and leakage air) and the influence on gas turbine performance. The procedure is based on a fluid-network solver modelling the engine secondary air system. Parametric curves implemented into the network model give the consumption of cooling air of blades and vanes. Performances of blade cooling systems based on different cooling technology are presented. Variations of secondary air flows in function of load and/or ambient conditions are discussed and justified. The effect of secondary air reduction is investigated in details showing the relationship between the position, along the gas path, of the upgrade and the increasing of engine performance. In particular, a section of the paper describes the application of a consistent and straightforward technique, based on an exergy analysis, to estimate the effect of major modifications to the air system on overall engine performance. A set of models for the different factors of cooling loss is presented and sample calculations are used to illustrate the splitting and magnitude of losses. Field data, referred to AE64.3A gas turbine, are used to calibrate the correlation method and to enhance the structure of the lumped-parameters network models. |
