• Recap: Lecture 23, 7th October 2024, 1035-1130 hrs.
– Stirling cycle
• Operation of a Stirling cycle
– Ericsson cycle
– Stirling, Ericsson and Carnot cycles
– Brayton cycle
• Tutorial # 4: Thursday, 11-October during lecture
hours
• Quiz # 3: 22 or 24 Oct. to be announced next week.
Brayton cycle
• The Brayton cycle was proposed by George Brayton in 1870
for use in reciprocating engines.
• Modern day gas turbines operate on Brayton cycle and work
with rotating machinery.
• Gas turbines operate in open-cycle mode, but can be
modelled as closed cycle using air-standard assumptions.
• Combustion and exhaust replaced by constant pressure heat
addition and rejection.
Brayton cycle
• The Brayton cycle consists of four internally reversible processes:
– 1-2 Isentropic compression (in a compressor)
– 2-3 Constant-pressure heat addition
– 3-4 Isentropic expansion (in a turbine)
– 4-1 Constant-pressure heat rejection
Brayton cycle
qin Isobaric 3
P Isentropic
2 3 T qin
2 4
qout
1 4 1
qout
v s
Brayton cycle on P-v and T-s diagrams
Brayton cycle
• The energy balance for a steady-flow process can
be expressed as:
(qin - qout ) + ( win - wout ) = Dh
The heat transfer to and from the working fluid
can be written as :
qin = h3 - h2 = c p (T3 - T2 )
qout = h4 - h1 = c p (T4 - T1 )
Brayton cycle
• The thermal efficiency of the ideal Brayton cycle under
the cold air standard assumptions becomes:
wnet qout T4 - T1 T1 (T4 / T1 - 1)
hth , Brayton = = 1- = 1- = 1-
qin qin T3 - T2 T2 (T3 / T2 - 1)
Processes 1 - 2 and 3 - 4 are isentropic and
P2 = P3 and P4 = P1.
( g -1) / g ( g -1) / g
T1 æ P2 ö æ P3 ö T3
Therefore, = çç ÷÷ = çç ÷÷ =
T2 è P1 ø è P4 ø T4
Brayton cycle
• Substituting these equations into the thermal
efficiency relation and simplifying:
1
hth , Brayton = 1 - ( g -1) / g
rp
P2
where, rp = is the pressure ratio.
P1
• The thermal efficiency of a Brayton cycle is therefore
a function of the cycle pressure ratio and the ratio of
specific heats.
• Applications of gas turbine engines
– Aircraft engines
– Marine engines
– Power generation
– Racing cars
• Improve gas turbine efficiency
– Increasing turbine inlet temperature
• Limitation: materials that withstand high temperatures
– Increasing efficiency of turbomachinery and other
components
– Adding modifications to the basic cycle
• Regeneration, intercooling etc.
Brayton cycle with regeneration
• Regeneration can be carried out by using the hot air
exhausting from the turbine to heat up the compressor exit
flow.
• The thermal efficiency of the Brayton cycle increases as a
part of the heat rejected is re-used.
• Regeneration decreases the heat input (thus fuel)
requirements for the same net work output.
• Regeneration is also sometimes referred to as recuperation.
Brayton cycle with regeneration
3
qin
T
qregen 5’ 4
5
Regeneration
2
6 qsaved=qregen
1 qout
s
T-s diagram of a Brayton cycle with regeneration
Brayton cycle with regeneration
• The highest temperature occurring within the regenerator
is T4.
• Air normally leaves the regenerator at a lower temperature,
T5.
• In the limiting (ideal) case, the air exits the regenerator at
the inlet temperature of the exhaust gases T4.
• The actual and maximum heat transfers are:
qregen,act = h5 - h2 and qregen,max = h5’- h2 = h4 - h2
Brayton cycle with regeneration
• The extent to which a regenerator approaches an ideal
regenerator is called the effectiveness, ε and is defined as
ε = qregen,act / qregen,max = (h5 - h2)/(h4 - h2)
• Under the cold-air-standard assumptions, the thermal
efficiency of an ideal Brayton cycle with regeneration is:
æ T1 ö
hth ,regen = 1 - çç ÷÷(rp ) (g -1) / g
è T3 ø
• The thermal efficiency depends upon the temperature as
well as the pressure ratio.
Brayton cycle with intercooling,
reheating and regeneration
• The net work of a gas-turbine cycle is the difference between
the turbine work output and the compressor work input.
• It can be increased by either decreasing the compressor work
or increasing the turbine work, or both.
• The work required to compress a gas between two specified
pressures can be decreased by carrying out the compression
process in stages and cooling the gas in between: multi-stage
compression with intercooling.
Brayton cycle with intercooling,
reheating and regeneration
• Similarly the work output of a turbine can be increased by:
multi-stage expansion with reheating.
• As the number of stages of compression and expansion are
increased, the process approaches an isothermal process.
• A combination of intercooling and reheating can increase the
net work output of a Brayton cycle significantly.
Brayton cycle with intercooling,
reheating and regeneration
Polytropic
process paths
P
D C Work saved as
a result of
intercooling
B A
Intercooling
Isothermal
process path
1
v
Work inputs to a single-stage compressor
(process: 1AC) and a two-stage compressor
with intercooling (process: 1ABD).
Brayton cycle with intercooling,
reheating and regeneration
6 8
For best performance, it can
qin
T be shown that
P2 P4 P P
qregen = and 6 = 8
5 9 P1 P3 P7 P9
7
4 2
10
qsaved=qregen
3 1 qout
s
T-s diagram of an ideal gas-turbine cycle with
intercooling, reheating, and regeneration
Brayton cycle with intercooling,
reheating and regeneration
• The net work output of a gas-turbine cycle improves as a
result of intercooling and reheating.
• However, intercooling and reheating decreases the
thermal efficiency unless they are accompanied by
regeneration.
• This is because intercooling decreases the average
temperature at which heat is added, and reheating
increases the average temperature at which heat is
rejected.
Brayton cycle with intercooling,
reheating and regeneration
T
TH,avg
P=const
TL,avg
As the number of compression and expansion stages increases, the
Brayton cycle with intercooling, reheating, and regeneration
approaches the Ericsson cycle.