Abstract
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major greenhouse gas released by gas turbine power plants that is hazardous to the environment. Hence, it is vital to investigate the operational conditions that influence its emissions. Various research papers have utilized a variety of techniques to estimate CO2 emissions from fuel combustion in various power plants without taking into account the environmental operational characteristics which in turn may have a significant effect on the obtained output values. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to assess the carbon dioxide emissions while considering both external and internal functioning characteristics. In this paper, a novel empirical model for predicting the feasible amount of carbon dioxide emitted from a gas turbine power plant was developed based on ambient temperature, ambient relative humidity, compressor pressure ratio, turbine inlet temperature and the exhaust gas mass flow rate. The predictive model developed shows that the mass flow rate of CO2 emitted has a linear relationship with the turbine inlet temperature to ambient air temperature ratio, ambient relative humidity, compressor pressure ratio, and exhaust gas mass flow rate with a determination coefficient (R2) of 0.998. Results obtained shows that rise in ambient air temperature and air fuel ratio led to increase in CO2 emission, while increase in ambient relative humidity and compressor pressure ratio resulted in reduction of CO2 emission. Furthermore, the average emission of CO2 obtained for the gas turbine power plant was 644.893kgCO2/MWh and 634, 066, 348.44kgCO2/yr, of which the latter is within the guaranteed values of 726, 000, 000 kgCO2/yr. Thus, the model can be utilized to perform an optimal study for CO2 reduction in gas turbine power plants.