Abstract

With distributed power generation market, the most economical solution today is to generate power through small gas turbine systems, arbitrarily categorized as microturbines (5 to 200 kW) orminiturbines (200 to 500 kW). The thermal efficiency of such microturbines is about 20% or less if no recuperator is used in the system but, using a recuperator operating at 87% effectiveness, the efficiency of the gas turbine system increases to about 30%, a substantial performance improvement. However, cost of the recuperator is approximately 30% of the total power plant. This means that the heat exchanger (recuperator) must be designed to get high performance with minimum cost.In this paper, after providing the necessary concise information on compact heat exchangers, the discussion is presented on minimizing entropy generation for a compact heat exchanger with Louvered fins. So, thermodynamical optimization can play a key role in providing better performance for a compact heat exchanger.

Key words: Entropy generation, plate-fin heat exchanger, louvered fin, microturbine.