Sustainability Assessment of a Turboprop Engine: Exergy-Based Method

Abstract

Sustainable energy utilization is a necessary to reduce environmental impact and combat global warming in twenty-first century. For this purpose, sustainability parameters of a turboprop engine are presented with exergetic approach in this study. At first, commonly used sustainability assessment methods are summarized. Then, fundamentals of exergy analysis and sustainability terms are explained in details. After all, a turboprop engine is evaluated from this viewpoint to exemplify the explained methodology. As a result of the component based exergy analysis, exergy efficiency of the air compressor, combustion chamber, gas turbine and power turbine are found to be 87.04 %, 74.50 %, 89.0 % and 92.23 %, respectively, whereas exergy efficiency of the overall engine is 38.09 %. In the sustainable framework; waste exergy ratio, recoverable exergy rate, exergy destruction factor, environmental effect factor and exergetic sustainability index of the overall engine are found to be in order of 0.43, 0.00, 0.20, 4.38 and 0.23.