Exergoeconomic Analysis of Air Cooled Turboprop Engine: Air Craft Application

Aircraft engines powering propulsion of the aircraft is the key component of the system. In aircraft industry it is desirable that an aircraft engines should supply high speeds (for military fighters) with low maintenance (for civil airplanes). In this regard an integration of gas turbine engines with traditional propeller has been introduced and termed as turboprop engine. In present work, a gas turbine with cooled blading has been proposed to be the turboprop engine which has been exergoeconomically analyzed to assess the performance and economics related to the proposed turboprop engine. Exergo-economic analysis is a tool which combines thermodynamic analysis and economic principles to provide information that is helpful to predict thermodynamic performance and total cost of the engine (thermal system). The methodology includes energy, exergy and cost balance equations for component-wise modelling of whole system. “Average Cost Theory” (Levelized cost) approach has been adopted to analyze the entire system exergoeconomically. The work represents the characteristics curves for exergoeconomic parameters that show graphical relationship between the engine operating parameters and exergoeconomic parameters. Present study also compares the proposed turboprop engine with the well-known T56 turboprop engine and CT7-9C turboprop engine on exergoeconomic basis.