Gas Turbines

21
Defining a Gas Turbine Performance Reference Database Model Based on Acceptance Test Results
Norberto Pérez Rodríguez, Erik Rosado Tamariz, Alfonso Campos Amezcua and Rafael García Illescas
Instituto de Investigaciones Eléctricas (IIE) Mexico

1. Introduction
With the growing participation of natural gas (NG) in power generation industry, a global worry about the effects of chemicalcomposition changes on the behavior of gas turbines. A comparison of fossil fuels consumption used in power industry is shown in Figure 1 [1]. This figure represents a projection for the years 2003-2013 according to what is expected by the Mexican electric industry.

Fig. 1. Fuels Consumption in Mexican Power Industry.

526

Advances in Natural Gas Technology

The reduction of the fuel oilconsumption observed in the previous figure is due to the process of substitution of this fuel by natural gas. This is because environmental reasons and techniques for incrementing the installed capacity through turbo gas plants and combined cycles based on natural gas. As a sample of interest of the industry about this topic, it is possible to see that several technical papers related to thisproblematic, have been published during the last decade. All these works deal with gas quality, the variations on emissions, the increase in the noise levels and the consequences on gas turbine operation [2-10]. As departure point to evaluate the performance of turbogas power plants is analyzes, the increasing demand of electrical power in the world, as well as the necessity count with more modern andefficient electrical power plants orients to the design, installation and commercialization of new power plants which will be developed in harmony with the environment and promote energy saving. Like a behavior model of this phenomenon in Mexico is shown in Figure 2 where is presented the growth perspective to year 2016 of the national power sector in terms of generated gross energy.

Fig. 2.Generated Gross Energy by Years in Mexico [11]. The growth expectation and modernization in terms of generation of electrical power in the central zone of Mexico gave rules to the Mexican Company of Electric Energy Generation (MCEEG) that operate in this zone to realize the acquisition of electrical power plants of distributed generation on strategic and critics zones around of Mexico city.Therefore MCEEG drove the installation of fourteen 32MW turbo gas electrical power plants impelled by aero derivatives turbines which burn natural gas.

Defining a Gas Turbine Performance Reference Database Model Based on Acceptance Test Results

527

As a result of the technical and administrative necessity of the MCEEG; combined with the effective national regulations in Mexico on terms ofenergetic production, it is realized collaboration on Mexican Electrical Research Institute (MERI) with the objective to develop this task during the works development until the commercial operation of each unit generation. The main requirement to obtain the authorization certificate for beginning of the commercial operation of each one of fourteen power plants was the performance evaluation of eachunit expressed in terms of average net power capacity, heat consumption rate, maximum noise levels and permissible levels of emissions. The MERI was to realize the behavior evaluation of these parameters through the determination of the average net power capacity, heat consumption rate, maximum noise levels and permissible levels of emissions from data collected during acceptance test of each turbogas unit which was lead by a company specialized in the subject proposed by the supplier of the commissioning service of power plants and guaranteed by the MCEEG. As an additional product of the work carried out by the MERI, was develop a thermodynamics model based on real parameters obtained in each acceptance test which represents the initial operational state of the units and specifies the...