Velocity and Droplet Diameter Distributions of Reacting N-Heptane Sprays at Varied Boundary Conditions in a Generic Gas Turbine Combustor

Author(s):  
Michael Hage ◽  
Jan Bru¨bach ◽  
Andreas Dreizler

In addition to a previous isothermal study, the present work reports on reacting swirling flow fields and droplet diameter distributions. The employed combustion chamber enabled optical access from three sides allowing the application of laser based measurement techniques. It is equipped with an airblast atomizer nozzle typical for gas turbines. The parameters of the boundary conditions were varied to such an extent that laser diagnostics were feasible. The chamber pressure and the inlet temperature were 2–3 bar and 300–350°C, respectively. The analysis of the spray droplets were performed by two velocity component phase Doppler anemometry (PDA). The measurements allowed for the investigation of axial and radial droplet velocities, Sauter mean diameter (SMD) distributions and an estimation of the volume flow rates. Comparisons of the different operating conditions and the influence of the parameters are given in the discussion.

Author(s):  
Michael Hage ◽  
Andreas Dreizler ◽  
Johannes Janicka

The present study reports on non-reacting swirling flow fields and droplet diameter distributions of sprays at elevated pressures and reduced inlet air temperatures. The combustion chamber used in this study enabled optical access from three sides allowing the application of various laser based measurement techniques. It is equipped with an airblast atomizer nozzle typical for many gas turbines. The parameters of the boundary conditions, based on a reacting case for a partially premixed turbulent flame, were varied to such an extent that laser diagnostics were feasible. The effects of variation in chamber pressure (2–3 bar) and inlet temperature (250–350°C) are discussed. In order to investigate the influence of the atomized liquids, and thereby surface tensions, water sprays were analysed additionally for comparison to n-heptane. For single-phase isothermal air flows, mean velocities and RMS-values were measured using laser Doppler anemometry (LDA). The aim was solely to test the performance of the turbulence model in a subsequent numerical simulation and to allow for a characterization of the flow field in absence of the spray. In addition to the statistically independent LDA measurements, time series were recorded with the intention to gain structural information on the flow patterns. The autocorrelations derived from the time series revealed a periodic coherent structure within the flow pattern indicating the presence of a precessing vortex core (PVC) typical for swirl stabilized flows.


Author(s):  
Jacob E. Rivera ◽  
Robert L. Gordon ◽  
Mohsen Talei ◽  
Gilles Bourque

Abstract This paper reports on an optimisation study of the CO turndown behaviour of an axially staged combustor, in the context of industrial gas turbines (GT). The aim of this work is to assess the optimally achievable CO turndown behaviour limit given system and operating characteristics, without considering flow-induced behaviours such as mixing quality and flame spatial characteristics. To that end, chemical reactor network modelling is used to investigate the impact of various system and operating conditions on the exhaust CO emissions of each combustion stage, as well as at the combustor exit. Different combustor residence time combinations are explored to determine their contribution to the exhaust CO emissions. The two-stage combustor modelled in this study consists of a primary (Py) and a secondary (Sy) combustion stage, followed by a discharge nozzle (DN), which distributes the exhaust to the turbines. The Py is modelled using a freely propagating flame (FPF), with the exhaust gas extracted downstream of the flame front at a specific location corresponding to a specified residence time (tr). These exhaust gases are then mixed and combusted with fresh gases in the Sy, modelled by a perfectly stirred reactor (PSR) operating within a set tr. These combined gases then flow into the DN, which is modelled by a plug flow reactor (PFR) that cools the gas to varying combustor exit temperatures within a constrained tr. Together, these form a simplified CRN model of a two-stage, dry-low emissions (DLE) combustion system. Using this CRN model, the impact of the tr distribution between the Py, Sy and DN is explored. A parametric study is conducted to determine how inlet pressure (Pin), inlet temperature (Tin), equivalence ratio (ϕ) and Py-Sy fuel split (FS), individually impact indicative CO turndown behaviour. Their coupling throughout engine load is then investigated using a model combustor, and its effect on CO turndown is explored. Thus, this aims to deduce the fundamental, chemically-driven parameters considered to be most important for identifying the optimal CO turndown of GT combustors. In this work, a parametric study and a model combustor study are presented. The parametric study consists of changing a single parameter at a time, to observe the independent effect of this change and determine its contribution to CO turndown behaviour. The model combustor study uses the same CRN, and varies the parameters simultaneously to mimic their change as an engine moves through its steady-state power curve. The latter study thus elucidates the difference in CO turndown behaviour when all operating conditions are coupled, as they are in practical engines. The results of this study aim to demonstrate the parameters that are key for optimising and improving CO turndown.


Author(s):  
Pritee Purohit ◽  
Shashikant T. Vagge

This chapter describes how for power generators like gas turbines and aero engines, the economic and environmental challenges are increasing day by day for producing electricity more efficiently. The efficiency of power generators can be increased by changing its operating conditions like inlet temperature and procedure. Currently, the inlet temperature to the industrial gas turbine is reaching up to 1400°C. Also, in aero engines, the ring temperature reaches around 1550°C. Therefore, the coatings used in aero engine applications undergo short duration thermal cycles at very high temperature. The mean metal temperatures reach around 950°C and can increase up to 1100°C. But in industrial gas turbines, it varies from 800 to 950°C. Operating temperature of industrial gas turbines slowly reaches to maximum and ideally remains constant for thousands of hours, unlike aero engines.


Author(s):  
Daniel Sequera ◽  
Ajay K. Agrawal

Lean Premixed Combustion (LPM) is a widely used approach to effectively reduce pollutant emissions in advanced gas turbines. Most LPM combustion systems employ the swirling flow with a bluff body at the center to stabilize the flame. The flow recirculation region established downstream of the bluff-body brings combustion products in contact with fresh reactants to sustain the reactions. However, such systems are prone to combustion oscillations and flame flashback, especially if high hydrogen containing fuels are used. Low-Swirl Injector (LSI) is an innovative approach, whereby a freely propagating LPM flame is stabilized in a diverging flow field surrounded by a weakly-swirling flow. The LSI is devoid of the flow recirculation region in the reaction zone. In the present study, emissions measurements are reported for a LSI operated on mixtures of methane (CH4), hydrogen (H2), and carbon monoxide (CO) to simulate H2 synthetic gas produced by coal gasification. For a fixed adiabatic flame temperature and air flow rate, CH4 content of the fuel in atmospheric pressure experiments is varied from 100% to 50% (by volume) with the remainder of the fuel containing equal amounts of CO and H2. For each test case, the CO and nitric oxide (NOx) emissions are measured axially at the combustor center and radially at several axial locations. Results show that the LSI provides stable flame for a range of operating conditions and fuel mixtures. The emissions are relatively insensitive to the fuel composition within the operational range of the present experiments.


Author(s):  
Shashank Shetty ◽  
Xianchang Li ◽  
Ganesh Subbuswamy

Due to the unique role of gas turbine engines in power generation and aircraft propulsion, significant effort has been made to improve the gas turbine performance. As a result, the turbine inlet temperature is usually elevated to be higher than the metal melting point. Therefore, effective cooling of gas turbines is a critical task for engines’ efficiency as well as safety and lifetime. Film cooling has been used to cool the turbine blades for many years. The main issues related to film cooling are its poor coverage, aerodynamic loss, and increase of heat transfer coefficient due to strong mixing. To overcome these problems, film cooling with backward injection has been found to produce a more uniform cooling coverage under low pressure and temperature conditions and with simple cylindrical holes. Therefore, the focus of this paper is on the performance of film cooling with backward injection at gas turbine operating conditions. By applying numerical simulation, it is observed that along the centerline on both concave and convex surfaces, the film cooling effectiveness decreases with backward injection. However, cooling along the span is improved, resulting in more uniform cooling.


Author(s):  
Nicola Aldi ◽  
Nicola Casari ◽  
Mirko Morini ◽  
Michele Pinelli ◽  
Pier Ruggero Spina ◽  
...  

Abstract Energy and climate change policies associated with the continuous increase in natural gas costs pushed governments to invest in renewable energy and alternative fuels. In this perspective, the idea to convert gas turbines from natural gas to syngas from biomass gasification could be a suitable choice. Biogas is a valid alternative to natural gas because of its low costs, high availability and low environmental impact. Syngas is produced with the gasification of plant and animal wastes and then burnt in gas turbine combustor. Although synfuels are cleaned and filtered before entering the turbine combustor, impurities are not completely removed. Therefore, the high temperature reached in the turbine nozzle can lead to the deposition of contaminants onto internal surfaces. This phenomenon leads to the degradation of the hot parts of the gas turbine and consequently to the loss of performance. The amount of the deposited particles depends on mass flow rate, composition and ash content of the fuel and on turbine inlet temperature (TIT). Furthermore, compressor fouling plays a major role in the degradation of the gas turbine. In fact, particles that pass through the inlet filters, enter the compressor and could deposit on the airfoil. In this paper, the comparison between five (5) heavy-duty gas turbines is presented. The five machines cover an electrical power range from 1 MW to 10 MW. Every model has been simulated in six different climate zones and with four different synfuels. The combination of turbine fouling, compressor fouling, and environmental conditions is presented to show how these parameters can affect the performance and degradation of the machines. The results related to environmental influence are shown quantitatively, while those connected to turbine and compressor fouling are reported in a more qualitative manner. Particular attention is given also to part-load conditions. The power units are simulated in two different operating conditions: 100 % and 80 % of power rate. The influence of this variation on the intensity of fouling is also reported.


Author(s):  
Debasish Biswas ◽  
Aya Kitoh

The demand of an increase in the cycle performance of today’s gas turbines creates severe heat loads in the first turbine stage, since higher operating temperatures are required. The mean flow temperature is usually well above the limit supported by the surrounding material. Cooling of both end-walls and the blades of the first stage is thus usually necessary. Consequently, mid-span streaks of hot gas pass through the first stator row and become hot jets of fluid. Also, the exit flow from a gas turbine combustor entering a turbine stage can have a wide variation in temperature. These variations may be both spatial and temporal. The implementation of cooling method requires a clear understanding of the aerodynamics involved. Both qualitative and quantitative assessments of the redistribution of inlet temperature distortions can be used to considerable advantage by the turbine designer. Experimentally it has been demonstrated that the rotor actually separates the hotter and cooler streams of fluid so that a hotter fluid migrates toward the pressure surface and cooler fluid migrates towards the suction surface. The main purpose of this study is to test the performance of a high-order LES model in terms of predicting this type of highly complicated unsteady flow and heat transfer phenomena. This work describes the performance of a high-order Large Eddy Simulation (LES) turbulent model (developed by the first author) related to the prediction of above mentioned redistribution of inlet temperature distortion in an experimental turbine. Because the understanding of the physical phenomena associated with this temperature redistribution behavior is a very challenging computational fluid dynamic problem. If the numerical method could predict the precisely measured data satisfactorily, then the fluid dynamic variables which are difficult to measure (but obtained as computed results) could be used to visualize the flow characteristics. This technique will also help to get rid off indirect measurement techniques with large measurement uncertainty. In our study emphasis is put to predict the unsteady turbulence characteristics. In this work 3-D unsteady Navier-Stokes analysis of a turbine stage (satisfying the experimental stator-rotor blade ratio) is carried out to study the above mentioned phenomena. The numerical results predicted the experimentally observed phenomena very well. The fact that the streamlines in the stator row remain unaffected was demonstrated by the numerical results. The measured characteristics of the streamline patterns in the rotor row resulted from the secondary flow effect and consequently the inlet temperature distortion effect is also very well predicted.


Author(s):  
Muhammad Awais ◽  
Reaz Hasan ◽  
Md. Hamidur Rahman

Modern gas turbine engines operate at significantly high temperatures to improve thermal efficiency and power output to a greater extent. The enhancement in rotor inlet temperature (RIT) increases the heat transfer rate to the turbine blades which requires sophisticated cooling schemes to maintain the blade temperature in acceptable levels. Therefore, the present work refers to the numerical investigation of film cooling technique applied in gas turbines. The cooling performance of two different shaped holes namely Ginkgo Forward (GF) and Ginkgo Reverse (GR)) were investigated in terms of centerline and local lateral effectiveness and comprehensive comparison was made with the cooling performance of cylindrical (CY) hole. The investigations were performed at two density ratios (DR=1.6, 2.0) and three different blowing ratios (BR=1.0, 1.5 and 2.0). At all the operating conditions, the results demonstrated significant augmentation in centerline and lateral effectiveness when GR shaped hole was employed followed by the GF and CY cooling holes. For shaped holes, the low velocity gradient through the film alleviated jet lift off and turbulence intensity resulting in decreased entrainment of hot gas to bottom surface. To conclude, the lateral coverage due to the shaped cooling holes significantly enhanced the thermal protection and overall cooling performance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Chao Deng ◽  
Ahmed N. Abdalla ◽  
Thamir K. Ibrahim ◽  
MingXin Jiang ◽  
Ahmed T. Al-Sammarraie ◽  
...  

In this article, the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and multiconfiguration gas-turbines are used to predict the optimal gas-turbine operating parameters. The principle formulations of gas-turbine configurations with various operating conditions are introduced in detail. The effects of different parameters have been analyzed to select the optimum gas-turbine configuration. The adopted ANFIS model has five inputs, namely, isentropic turbine efficiency (Teff), isentropic compressor efficiency (Ceff), ambient temperature (T1), pressure ratio (rp), and turbine inlet temperature (TIT), as well as three outputs, fuel consumption, power output, and thermal efficiency. Both actual reported information, from Baiji Gas-Turbines of Iraq, and simulated data were utilized with the ANFIS model. The results show that, at an isentropic compressor efficiency of 100% and turbine inlet temperature of 1900 K, the peak thermal efficiency amounts to 63% and 375 MW of power resulted, which was the peak value of the power output. Furthermore, at an isentropic compressor efficiency of 100% and a pressure ratio of 30, a peak specific fuel consumption amount of 0.033 kg/kWh was obtained. The predicted results reveal that the proposed model determines the operating conditions that strongly influence the performance of the gas-turbine. In addition, the predicted results of the simulated regenerative gas-turbine (RGT) and ANFIS model were satisfactory compared to that of the foregoing Baiji Gas-Turbines.


Author(s):  
Stefan Bauer ◽  
Balbina Hampel ◽  
Thomas Sattelmayer

Abstract Vortex generators are known to be effective in augmenting the mixing of fuel jets with air. The configuration investigated in this study is a tubular air passage with fuel injection from one single orifice placed in the side wall. In the range of typical gas turbine combustor inlet temperatures, the performance vortex generator premixers (VGPs) have already been investigated for natural gas as well as for blends of natural gas and hydrogen. However, for highly reactive fuels, the application of VGPs in recuperated gas turbines is particularly challenging because the high combustor inlet temperature leads to potential risk with regard to premature self-ignition and flame flashback. As the current knowledge does not cover the temperature range far above the self-ignition temperature, an experimental investigation of the operational limits of VGPs is currently being conducted at the Thermodynamics Institute of the Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany, which is particularly focused on reactive fuels and the thermodynamic conditions present in recuperated gas turbines with pressure ratios of 4–5. For the study presented in this paper, an atmospheric combustion VGP test rig has been designed, which facilitates investigations in a wide range of operating conditions in order to comply with the situation in recuperated microgas turbines (MGT), namely, global equivalence ratios between 0.2 and 0.7, air preheating temperatures between 288 K and 1100 K, and air bulk flow rates between 6 and 16 g/s. Both the entire mixing zone in the VGP and the primary combustion zone of the test rig are optically accessible. High-speed OH* chemiluminescence imaging is used for the detection of the flashback and blow-off limits of the investigated VGPs. Flashback and blow-off limits of hydrogen in a wide temperature range covering the autoignition regime are presented, addressing the influences of equivalence ratio, air preheating temperature, and momentum ratio between air and hydrogen on the operational limits in terms of bulk flow velocity. It is shown that flashback and blow-off limits are increasingly influenced by autoignition in the ultrahigh temperature regime.


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