ringo wrote:wuzak wrote:
The intercooler reduces the temperature of the air exiting the compressor and entering the combustion chambers. That means lower temperature on the entry to the turbine, which means lower thermal efficiency.
No an intercooler is not before a turbine. It is always between compression stages.
I never said the intercooling was before the turbine. The fact remains that if you have intercooling in multi-stage compressor the output air will be cooler.
ringo wrote:wuzak wrote:
This can be recovered by using reheat - burning a little more fuel in the exhaust and running it through a second turbine.
Nope. I've done some turbo machinery theory many years ago, reheat is not for recovery. It's simply to raise the pre combustion temperatures. You can still use reheat on a system with no intercooler.
Ok, so recovery was the wrong word to use there.
ringo wrote:And/Or regeneration. Regeneration is taking the waste heat from the exhaust and using it to increase the air temperature after the compressor. This results in higher temperatures at the turbine or less fuel required to reach the same temperature.
What higher temperature does is reduce the amount of heat needed to be added by the fuel.
Which is part of what I said. I also said that with the same amount of fuel the temperature can be raised higher, which is OK so long as your turbine section can handle the extra temperature.
ringo wrote:Intercooling between compressor sets (high and low pressure, rather than every individual stage) does lower the compressor work required, but does not increase the overall efficiency of the turbine.
You are trying to back out of the discussion now by muddling the discussion. Why are talking about
efficiency of the turbine, when you were orginally talking about
thermal efficiency?
The turbine efficency is fixed.
Is it really? By what? Its geometry?
In any case I was talking of the gas turbine, which is the entire engine.
ringo wrote:It is also irrelevent for most reciprocating turbo engines. Intercooling in turbo engines really is aftercoling, since in most cases there is only one stage of compression. It is added to keep the intake air at a temperature that won't induce detonation in the engine.
Let me reveal a secret to you.
first stage of compression: compressor (compressing air right?)
second stage of compression: piston (still compressing air correct?)
You know what i'm going to do to increase the efficiency? I'm going to put an intercooler between those 2 stages of compression on that piston engine, so that the pistons have more mass of air to compress.
There are 2 stages of compression in all turbo charged piston engines. I hope this clears things up for you.
Whetever Ringo. Intercooling is not used to reduce compression forces in a trubocharged reciprocating piston engine. It may have some small effect in that, but it is primarily for preventing detonation.