Design and optimization of a gas turbine regenerator with fixed pressure drop using GA and firefly algorithms

The present study investigates eight design parameters such as seal coverage, core porosity, core volume ratio, core thickness, dimensionless core rotation rate, inner diameter of the core, air mass flow rate and exhaust mass flow rate to design and optimize a regenerator of a 20-MW power generation gas turbine with fixed pressure drop. The application of GA and Firefly algorithms to optimize the effectiveness of the regenerator is presented to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed algorithms. The effect of change in the seal coverage, core porosity, core volume ratio and dimensionless core rotation rate are evaluated as important design parameters having influence on the size and mass of the core of the regenerator. This could be done through fixing each of these parameters, while the other seven design parameters are selected as variables to optimize the effectiveness. The results show that the selection of all eight-design parameters proposed as operating variables is necessary to optimize the parameters to achieve the proper design of this regenerator.