Modeling of Pollutant Formation in Gas Turbine Combustors Using Fast Reactor Network Model

Author(s):  
Piyush Thakre ◽  
Ivana Veljkovic ◽  
Vincent Lister ◽  
Graham Goldin

Abstract We present a robust, fast, and highly-automated Reactor Network model within a single simulation framework in Simcenter STAR-CCM+. An industrial gas turbine combustor operating at 3 bar is numerically investigated using the GRI 3.0 chemical mechanism. A baseline CFD solution with RANS and Flamelet Generated Manifold combustion model was used to create the network of reactors. A number of model variations have been investigated, such as the use of constant pressure vs. perfectly stirred reactors. Two options for the temperature solution are considered, namely temperature mapped from the CFD solution and temperature computed from an equation of state. Different numbers of reactors are investigated to understand the overall sensitivity on the key combustion results. It was found that with appropriate clustering variables, using a few thousand reactors provide a reasonable representation of the species fields. The simulation results are compared with the available experimental data for the combustor. The NOx and CO emissions predictions with the Reactor Network model perform better than the baseline CFD model. The Reactor Network model was about ∼3 orders of magnitude faster than a detailed chemistry CFD of the same combustor.


Author(s):  
George Mallouppas ◽  
Graham Goldin ◽  
Yongzhe Zhang ◽  
Piyush Thakre ◽  
Niveditha Krishnamoorthy ◽  
...  

An experimental variant of a commercial swirl burner for industrial gas turbine combustors operating at 3 bar is numerically investigated using high-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics models using STAR-CCM+ v11.06. This work presents the computational results of the SGT-100 Dry Low Emission gas turbine provided by Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery Ltd. The related experimental study was performed at the DLR Institute of Combustion Technology, Stuttgart, Germany. The objective of this work is to compare the performance of the Flamelet Generated Manifold model, which is the widely accepted combustion model in Gas Turbines with the Complex Chemistry model. In particular this work examines the flame shape and position, pollutant formation predicted by the aforementioned models with Large Eddy Simulations. Mean and RMS quantities of the flow field, flame temperatures and major species are presented and compared with the experiments. The results show that the predictions are insensitive on the meshing strategy and at the evaluated mesh sizes of ∼10 million and ∼44 million cells. The mean and RMS errors are ∼8% compared to the reported experiments and these differences are within the measurement errors. The results show that the calculated flame positions are in very good agreement with the reported measurements and the typical M-shape flame is reproduced independent of the combustion model. Pollutant formation in the combustor predicted by two combustion models is scrutinised. The predicted NO and CO emissions levels are in agreement with the literature.



2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Karalus ◽  
Piyush Thakre ◽  
Graham Goldin ◽  
Dustin Brandt

Abstract A Honeywell liquid-fueled gas turbine test combustor, at idle conditions is numerically investigated in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ version 2020.3. This work presents Large Eddy Simulation (LES) results using both the Flamelet Generated Manifold (FGM) and detailed chemistry combustion models. Both take advantage of a hybrid chemical mechanism (HyChem) which has previously demonstrated very good accuracy for real fuels such as Jet-A with only 47 species. The objective of this work is to investigate the ability of FGM and detailed chemistry modeling to capture pollutant formation in an aero-engine combustor. Comparisons for NOx, CO, Unburned Hydrocarbons, and Soot are made, along with the radial temperature profile. To fully capture potential emissions, a soot moment model, and Zeldovich NOx model are employed along with radiation. A comparison of results with and without chemistry acceleration techniques for detailed chemistry is included. Then, computational costs are assessed by comparing the performance and scalability of the simulations with each of the combustion models. It is found that the detailed chemistry case with clustering can reproduce nearly identical results to detailed chemistry without any acceleration if CO is added as a clustering variable. With the Lagrangian model settings chosen for this study, the detailed chemistry results compared more favorably with the experimental data than FGM, however there is uncertainty in the secondary breakup parameters. Sensitivity of the results to a key parameter in the spray breakup model are provided for both FGM and Complex Chemistry (CC). By varying this breakup rate, the FGM case can predict CO, NOx, and Unburned Hydrocarbons equally well. The smoke number, however, is predicted most accurately by CC. The cost for running detailed chemistry with clustering is found to be about 4 times that of FGM for this combustor and chemical mechanism.



Author(s):  
Megan Karalus ◽  
Piyush Thakre ◽  
Graham Goldin ◽  
Dustin Brandt

Abstract A Honeywell liquid-fueled gas turbine test combustor, at idle conditions is numerically investigated in Simcenter STAR-CCM+. This work presents Large Eddy Simulation (LES) results using both the Flamelet Generated Manifold (FGM) and Complex Chemistry (CC) combustion models. Both take advantage of a hybrid chemical mechanism (HyChem) which has previously demonstrated very good accuracy for real fuels such as Jet-A with only 47 species. The objective of this work is to investigate the ability of FGM and CC to capture pollutant formation in an aero-engine. Comparisons for NOx, CO, Unburned Hydrocarbons, and Soot are made, along with the radial temperature pro?le. Computational costs are assessed by comparing the performance and scalability of the simulations with each of the combustion models. It is found that the CC case with clustering can reproduce nearly identical results to that without acceleration if CO is added as a clustering variable. With the Lagrangian model settings chosen for this study, the CC results compared more favorably with the experimental data than FGM, however there is uncertainty in the secondary breakup parameters. Sensitivity of the results to a key parameter in the spray breakup model are provided for both FGM and CC. By varying this breakup rate, the FGM case can predict CO, NOx, and Unburned Hydrocarbons equally well. The smoke number, however, is predicted most accurately by CC. The cost for running CC with clustering is found to be about 4 times that of FGM for this combustor and chemical mechanism.



Author(s):  
George Mallouppas ◽  
Graham Goldin ◽  
Yongzhe Zhang ◽  
Piyush Thakre ◽  
Jim Rogerson

Abstract Two different numerical techniques for chemistry acceleration are examined with Large Eddy Simulation of a commercial swirl industrial gas turbine combustor operating at 3 bar. This work presents the results for SGT-100 Dry Low Emission (DLE) gas turbine provided by Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery Ltd. The related experimental study was performed at the German Aerospace Centre, DLR, Stuttgart, Germany. LES with detailed chemistry calculations is an attractive tool to study turbulent premixed flames in industrial gas turbine combustors, because it can help understand turbulence-chemistry interactions, detailed flame characteristics and pollutant formation. Detailed chemistry can capture kinetically dominated processes such as ignition, extinction and pollutant formation. However, computational resources required for such calculations are often prohibitive due to the computational costs of transporting and integration of a large number of species with a wide range of chemical time-scales. Chemistry acceleration techniques can substantially reduce run-time with ideally a small loss in accuracy. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to quantify the relative increase in performance and potential loss in accuracy with two chemistry acceleration techniques namely Clustering, Dynamic Mechanism Reduction (DMR) and their combination. The results show that the different chemistry acceleration techniques do not compromise the time averaged flow statistics. However, there are some differences in NO and CO emissions. Chemistry acceleration techniques yield up to ∼3 times speed-up of the simulation.



Author(s):  
Tao Ren ◽  
Michael F. Modest ◽  
Somesh Roy

Radiative heat transfer is studied numerically for reacting swirling flow in an industrial gas turbine burner operating at a pressure of 15 bar. The reacting field characteristics are computed by Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations using the k-ε model with the partially stirred reactor (PaSR) combustion model. The GRI-Mech 2.11 mechanism, which includes nitrogen chemistry, is used to demonstrate the the ability of reducing NOx emissions of the combustion system. A Photon Monte Carlo (PMC) method coupled with a line-by-line spectral model is employed to accurately account for the radiation effects. CO2, H2O and CO are assumed to be the only radiatively participating species and wall radiation is considered as well. Optically thin and PMC-gray models are also employed to show the differences between the simplest radiative calculation models and the most accurate radiative calculation model, i.e., PMC-LBL, for the gas turbine burner. It was found that radiation does not significantly alter the temperature level as well as CO2 and H2O concentrations. However, it has significant impacts on the NOx levels at downstream locations.



Author(s):  
Pierre Q. Gauthier

The detailed modeling of the turbulence-chemistry interactions occurring in industrial flames has always been the leading challenge in combustion Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The wide range of flame types found in Industrial Gas Turbine Combustion systems has exacerbated these difficulties greatly, since the combustion modeling approach must be able to predict the flames behavior from regions of fast chemistry, where turbulence has no significant impact on the reactions, to regions where turbulence effects play a significant role within the flame. One of these combustion models, that is being used more and more in industry today, is the Flamelet Generated Manifold (FGM) model, in which the flame properties are parametrized and tabulated based on mixture fraction and flame progress variables. This paper compares the results obtained using an FGM model, with a GRI-3.0 methane-air chemistry mechanism, against the more traditional Industrial work-horse, Finite-Rate Eddy Dissipation Model (FREDM), with a global 2-step Westbrook and Dryer methane-air mechanism. Both models were used to predict the temperature distributions, as well as emissions (NOx and CO) for a conventional, non-premixed, Industrial RB211 combustion system. The object of this work is to: (i) identify any significant differences in the predictive capabilities of each model and (ii) discuss the strengths and weakness of both approaches.



Author(s):  
George Mallouppas ◽  
Graham Goldin ◽  
Yongzhe Zhang ◽  
Piyush Thakre ◽  
Jim Rogerson

Abstract Three Flamelet Generated Manifold reaction source term closure options and two different reactor types are examined with Large Eddy Simulation of an industrial gas turbine combustor operating at 3 bar. This work presents the results for the SGT-100 Dry Low Emission (DLE) gas turbine provided by Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery Ltd. The related experimental study was performed at the German Aerospace Centre, DLR, Stuttgart, Germany. The FGM model approximates the thermo-chemistry in a turbulent flame as that in a simple 0D constant pressure ignition reactors and 1D strained opposed-flow premixed reactors, parametrized by mixture fraction, progress variable, enthalpy and pressure. The first objective of this work is to compare the flame shape and position predicted by these two FGM reactor types. The Kinetic Rate (KR) model, studied in this work, uses the chemical rate from the FGM with assumed shapes, which are a Beta function for mixture fraction and delta functions for reaction progress variable and enthalpy. Another model investigated is the Turbulent Flame-Speed Closure (TFC) model with Zimont turbulent flame speed, which propagates premixed flame fronts at specified turbulent flame speeds. The Thickened Flame Model (TFM), which artificially thickens the flame to sufficiently resolve the internal flame structure on the computational grid, is also explored. Therefore, a second objective of this paper is to compare KR, TFC and TFM with the available experimental data.



Author(s):  
Alessandro Innocenti ◽  
Antonio Andreini ◽  
Andrea Giusti ◽  
Bruno Facchini ◽  
Matteo Cerutti ◽  
...  

In the present paper a numerical analysis of a low NOx partially premixed burner for industrial gas turbine applications is presented. The first part of the work is focused on the study of the premixing process inside the burner. Standard RANS CFD approach was used: k–ε turbulence model was modified and calibrated in order to find a configuration able to fit available experimental profiles of fuel/air concentration at the exit of the burner. The resulting profiles at different test points have been used to perform reactive simulations of an experimental test rig, where exhaust NOx emissions were measured. An assessment of the turbulent combustion model was carried out with a critical investigation of the expected turbulent combustion regimes in the system and taking into account the partially premixed nature of the flame due to the presence of diffusion type pilot flames. A reliable numerical setup was discovered by comparing predicted and measured NOx emissions at different operating conditions and at different split ratio between main and pilot fuel. In the investigated range, the influence of the premixer in the NOx formation rate was found to be marginal if compared with the pilot flame one. The calibrated numerical setup was then employed to explore possible modifications to fuel injection criteria and fuel split, with the aim of minimizing exhaust NOx emissions. This preliminary numerical screening of alternative fuel injection strategies allowed to define a set of advanced configurations to be investigated in future experimental tests.



2004 ◽  
Vol 126 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-905 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Riesmeier ◽  
S. Honnet ◽  
N. Peters

Combustion and pollutant formation in a gas turbine combustion chamber is investigated numerically using the Eulerian particle flamelet model. The code solving the unsteady flamelet equations is coupled to an unstructured computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code providing solutions for the flow and mixture field from which the flamelet parameters can be extracted. Flamelets are initialized in the fuel-rich region close to the fuel injectors of the combustor. They are represented by marker particles that are convected through the flow field. Each flamelet takes a different pathway through the combustor, leading to different histories for the flamelet parameters. Equations for the probability of finding a flamelet at a certain position and time are additionally solved in the CFD code. To model the chemical properties of kerosene, a detailed reaction mechanism for a mixture of n-decane and 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene is used. It includes a detailed NOx submechanism and the buildup of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons up to four aromatic rings. The kinetically based soot model describes the formation of soot particles by inception, further growth by coagulation, and condensation as well as surface growth and oxidation. Simulation results are compared to experimental data obtained on a high-pressure rig. The influence of the model on pollutant formation is shown, and the effect of the number of flamelets on the model is investigated.



2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 1643-1651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jungkyu Park ◽  
Truc Huu Nguyen ◽  
Daero Joung ◽  
Kang Yul Huh ◽  
Min Chul Lee


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