Gas Turbine Power Output Question

The reason for the combustion process in a heat engine (e.g. gas turbine or ICE) is to heat the air so that it expands. If the air was not heated inside the engine, there would be no power output. Preheating of the air before its induction into an otherwise normal gas turbine will reduce power output.

Did you ever see the test film of the race to develop the new fighter aircraft Boeing versus Lock Heed Martin They had to make it a VTOL vertical take off and landing. One of the aircraft had a near miss when the take off tests were taking place and the engines exhaust fed back into the air inlet it lost power and nearly crashed, this was at about 10 feet of the ground. It may be on file some where.

To think on the other end of the spectrum, cold (super cold) air is more dense, so a compressor of a turbine might overpressure dense air, so we have limits of how cold air can be for both internal combustion compression engine (diesel) and to some extent CGT (Combustion Gas Turbine). I have had to heat the -50*C cold arctic air before due to this, but not too hot as we loose power as others point out (hot air = less density = less air fuel ratio control = less expansion = less power = airplane crashing 10 feet of the grown from recycled exhaust gas heat)

The COOLER the intake air, the less hot the final air at combustors -the more The output KW can you get outof the GT - without overheating the 1st stage Turbine blades.

The final limitation is the tolerable Hi Temperature at the 1st/2nd GT blade tips

MUKULMAHANT is right.

Let's say ΔT = T2 - T1 where T2 = Turbine exhaust temperature; T1 = Compressor inlet air temperature.

The greater ΔT is, the more GT output you get. While naturally T2 > T1, increasing T1 will be reducing ΔT, therefore reducing GT output.

Roughly speaking, every 10 °C of increase in inlet air temperature will result in 1% drop in GT output.