Ceramic tubes membrane technology as a new humidification technique for gas turbine inlet air cooling

Journal Article

, Obida Zeitoun, . 2014

• المجلة \ الصحيفة: International Journal of Thermal Sciences

مستخلص المنشور

An experimental study is conducted to cool the ambient air using a new humidification technique.  A wind tunnel is built with a test section formed by a matrix of ceramic tubes.  An ambient air passes over the ceramic tubes matrix (cross flow) where water is passing through the ceramic tubes.  Air temperature and relative humidity data are measured upstream and downstream of the ceramic tube bundle used to humidify the ambient air for several air and water flow velocities.  Air velocity is measured at different locations along the centerline of the cross sections.  Results show that the ambient temperature drops by about 10 oC when the relative humidity increases from 2% to 5.4%. Heat and mass transfer analyses are made and show good comparison with the available correlations in the literature.  It is noticed that the evaporation process does not follow the iso- enthalpic lines therefore, heat transfers from the air as latent and sensible heats.  A 25% decrease in the duct air outlet temperature is obtained as the water velocity increased to 0.034 m/s (9.61x10-7 m3/s).  The average relative humidity increases from about 9% to 12% and from about 6% to 9.5% for different inlet ambient conditions.