Development and Atmospheric Testing of a High Hydrogen FlameSheet™ Combustor for the OP16 Gas Turbine

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thijs Bouten ◽  
Jan Withag ◽  
Lars-Uno Axelsson ◽  
Joris Koomen ◽  
Diethard Jansen ◽  
...  

Abstract Gas turbines with a combustion system for hydrogen operation offer a low carbon solution to support the stability of the energy grid. This provides a solution capturing the needs for energy storage, in the form of hydrogen, and flexible power generation. Fuel flexibility is a key requirement to reduce the operational risks in case hydrogen is not available, whereby hydrogen can be combined with other conventional or alternative fuels. A key issue to achieve 100% hydrogen combustion with low emissions is to prevent flashback. To address the challenges, a project consortium was set-up consisting of gas turbine equipment manufacturers, academia and end-users. The major objective is to develop a cost-effective, ultra-low emissions (sub 9 ppm NOx and CO) combustion system for gas turbines in the 1–300 MW output range, including the 1.85 MWe OPRA OP16 gas turbine. At the center of this innovative high-technology project is the patented and novel aerodynamic trapped vortex FlameSheet™ combustion technology platform. Burner concepts based on an aerodynamically trapped vortex flame stabilization have a higher resistance towards flame blowout than conventional swirl stabilized burners. This paper will present the results of the first phase of the project, whereby atmospheric testing of the upgraded FlameSheet™ combustor has been performed operating on natural gas, hydrogen and mixtures thereof. The optimized combustor configurations demonstrated a wide load range on 100% hydrogen, and these results will be presented.

Author(s):  
Vladimir Lupandin ◽  
Martyn Hexter ◽  
Alexander Nikolayev

This paper describes a development program active at Magellan Aerospace Corporation since 2003, whereby specific modifications are incorporated into an Avco Lycoming T-53 helicopter gas turbine engine to enable it to function as a ground based Industrial unit for distributed power generation. The Lycoming T-53 is a very well proven and reliable two shaft gas turbine engine whose design can be traced back to the 1950s and the fact of its continued service to the present day is a tribute to the original design/development team. Phase 1 of the Program introduces abradable rotor path linings, blade coatings and changes to seal and blade tip clearances. Magellan has built a test cell to run the power generation units to full speed and full power in compliance with ISO 2314. In co-operation with Zorya-Mashproekt, Ukraine, the exhaust emissions of the existing combustion system for natural gas was reduced by 30%. New nozzles for low heat value fuels and for high hydrogen content fuels (up to 60% H2) have been developed. The T-53 gas turbine engine exhaust gas temperature is typically around 620 deg C, which makes it a very good candidate for co-generation and recuperated applications. As per Phase 2 of the program, the existing helicopter integral gearbox and separate industrial step-down gearbox will be replaced with single integral gearbox that will use the same lubrication oil system as the gas turbine engine. The engine power output will increase to 1200 kW at the generator terminals with an improvement to 25% efficiency ISO. Phase 3 of the Program will see the introduction of a new silo type combustion system, developed in order to utilize alternative fuels such as bio-diesel, biofuel (product of wood pyrolysis), land fill gases, syn gases etc. Phase 4 of the Program in cooperation with ORMA, Russia will introduce a recuperator into the package and is expected to realize a boost in overall efficiency to 37%. The results of testing the first two T-53 industrial gas turbine engines modified per Phase 1 will be presented.


Author(s):  
Martin Beran ◽  
Lars-Uno Axelsson

The growing demand for more economical and environmentally friendly power generation forces the industry to search for fuels that can replace the conventional fossil fuels. This has led to significant developments in the production of alternative fuels during the last years, which have made them a reliable and relatively efficient source of energy. One example of these alternative fuels is the pyrolysis oil. However, higher viscosity, lower heat content, limited chemical stability and its ability to create sediment make pyrolysis oil challenging for gas turbines. The OPRA OP16 gas turbine is an all radial single-shaft gas turbine rated at 1.9 MW. The all radial design, together with the lack of intricate cooling geometries in the hot section, makes this gas turbine suitable for operation on these fuels. This paper presents an experimental investigation of pyrolysis oil combustion in a tubular combustor developed especially for low-calorific fuels. The experiments have been performed in an atmospheric combustion test rig and the results have been compared to the results obtained from ethanol and diesel combustion. It was found that it was possible to burn pure pyrolysis oil in the load range between 70 to 100% with a combustion efficiency exceeding 99% and without creation of sediments on the combustor inner wall. It was found that the NOx emissions were similar for pyrolysis oil and diesel, whereas the CO emissions were twice as high for pyrolysis oil. A comparison between the air blast nozzle and the pressure nozzle was performed. The air blast nozzle was found to be more suitable due to its better performance over a wider operating range and that it is more resistant to erosion and abrasion. It was found that the maximum allowed droplet size of the pyrolysis oil spray should be about 50–70% of the droplet size for diesel fuel.


Author(s):  
Kenneth O. Smith ◽  
Peter L. Therkelsen ◽  
David Littlejohn ◽  
Sy Ali ◽  
Robert K. Cheng

This paper reports the results of preliminary analyses that show the feasibility of developing a fuel flexible (natural gas, syngas and high-hydrogen fuel) combustion system for IGCC gas turbines. Of particular interest is the use of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s DLN low swirl combustion technology as the basis for the IGCC turbine combustor. Conceptual designs of the combustion system and the requirements for the fuel handling and delivery circuits are discussed. The analyses show the feasibility of a multi-fuel, utility-sized, LSI-based, gas turbine engine. A conceptual design of the fuel injection system shows that dual parallel fuel circuits can provide range of gas turbine operation in a configuration consistent with low pollutant emissions. Additionally, several issues and challenges associated with the development of such a system, such as flashback and auto-ignition of the high-hydrogen fuels, are outlined.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Ćosić ◽  
Frank Reiß ◽  
Marc Blümer ◽  
Christian Frekers ◽  
Franklin Genin ◽  
...  

Abstract Industrial gas turbines like the MGT6000 are often operated as power supply or as mechanical drives for pumps and compressors at remote locations on islands and in deserts. Moreover, small gas turbines are used in CHP applications with a high need for availability. In these applications, liquid fuels like ‘Diesel Fuel No. 2’ can be used either as main fuel or as backup fuel if natural gas is not reliably available. The MAN Gas Turbines (MGT) operate with the Advanced Can Combustion (ACC) system, which is already capable of ultra-low NOx emissions for a variety of gaseous fuels. This system has been further developed to provide dry dual fuel capability to the MGT family. In the present paper, we describe the design and detailed experimental validation process of the liquid fuel injection, and its integration into the gas turbine package. A central lance with an integrated two-stage nozzle is employed as a liquid pilot stage, enabling ignition and start-up of the engine on liquid fuel only, without the need for any additional atomizing air. The pilot stage is continuously operated to support further the flame stabilization across the load range, whereas the bulk of the liquid fuel is injected through the premixed combustor stage. The premixed stage comprises a set of four decentralized nozzles placed at the exit of the main air swirler. These premixed nozzles are based on fluidic oscillator atomizers, wherein a rapid and effective atomization of the liquid fuel is achieved through self-induced oscillations of the liquid fuel stream. We present results of numerical and experimental investigations performed in the course of the development process illustrating the spray, hydrodynamic, and thermal performance of the pilot injectors. Extensive testing of the burner at atmospheric and full load high-pressure conditions has been performed, before verification of the whole combustion system within full engine tests. The burner shows excellent emission performance (NOx, CO, UHC, soot) without additional water injection, while maintaining the overall natural gas performance. Soot and particle emissions, quantified via several methods, are well below legal restrictions. Furthermore, when not in liquid fuel operation, a continuous purge of the injectors based on compressor outlet (p2) air has been laid out. Generic atmospheric coking tests were conducted before verifying the purge system in full engine tests. Thereby we completely avoid the need for an additional high-pressure auxiliary compressor or demineralized water. We show the design of the fuel supply and distribution system. We designed it to allow for rapid fuel switchovers from gaseous fuel to liquid fuel, and for sharp load jumps. Finally, we discuss the integration of the dual fuel system into the standard gas turbine package of the MGT6000 in detail.


Author(s):  
Martin Beran ◽  
Lars-Uno Axelsson

The growing demand for more economical and environmentally friendly power generation forces the industry to search for fuels that can replace the conventional fossil fuels. This has led to significant developments in the production of alternative fuels during the last years, which have made them a reliable and relatively efficient source of energy. One example of these alternative fuels is the pyrolysis oil. However, higher viscosity, lower heat content, limited chemical stability, and its ability to create sediment make pyrolysis oil challenging for gas turbines. The OPRA OP16 gas turbine is an all radial single-shaft gas turbine rated at 1.9 MW. The all radial design, together with the lack of intricate cooling geometries in the hot section, makes this gas turbine suitable for operation on these fuels. This paper presents an experimental investigation of pyrolysis oil combustion in a tubular combustor developed, especially for low-calorific fuels. The experiments have been performed in an atmospheric combustion test rig, and the results have been compared to the results obtained from ethanol and diesel combustion. It was found that it was possible to burn pure pyrolysis oil in the load range between 70% and 100% with a combustion efficiency exceeding 99% and without creation of sediments on the combustor inner wall. It was found that the NOx emissions were similar for pyrolysis oil and diesel, whereas the CO emissions were twice as high for pyrolysis oil. A comparison between the air blast nozzle and the pressure nozzle was performed. The air blast nozzle was found to be more suitable due to its better performance over a wider operating range and that it is more resistant to erosion and abrasion. It was found that the maximum allowed droplet size of the pyrolysis oil spray should be about 50–70% of the droplet size for diesel fuel.


Author(s):  
William D. York ◽  
Willy S. Ziminsky ◽  
Ertan Yilmaz

Interest in hydrogen as a primary fuel stream in heavy-duty gas turbine engines has increased as precombustion carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has become a viable option for integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants. The U.S. Department of Energy has funded the Advanced IGCC/Hydrogen Gas Turbine Program since 2005 with an aggressive plant-level NOx target of 2 ppm at 15% O2 for an advanced gas turbine cycle. Approaching this NOx level with highly reactive hydrogen fuel at the conditions required is a formidable challenge that requires novel combustion technology. This study begins by measuring entitlement NOx emissions from perfectly premixed combustion of the high-hydrogen fuels of interest. A new premixing fuel injector for high-hydrogen fuels was designed to balance reliable flashback-free operation, reasonable pressure drop, and low emissions. The concept relies on small-scale jet-in-crossflow mixing that is a departure from traditional swirl-based premixing concepts. Single nozzle rig experiments were conducted at pressures of 10 atm and 17 atm, with air preheat temperatures of about 650 K. With nitrogen-diluted hydrogen fuel, characteristic of carbon-free syngas, stable operation without flashback was conducted up to flame temperatures of approximately 1850 K. In addition to the effects of pressure, the impacts of nitrogen dilution levels and amounts of minor constituents in the fuel—carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane—on flame holding in the premixer are presented. The new fuel injector concept has been incorporated into a full-scale, multinozzle combustor can with an energy conversion rate of more than 10 MW at F-class conditions. The full-can testing was conducted at full gas turbine conditions and various fuel compositions of hydrogen, natural gas, and nitrogen. This combustion system has accumulated over 100 h of fired testing at full load with hydrogen comprising over 90% of the reactants by volume. NOx emissions (ppm) have been measured in the single digits with hydrogen-nitrogen fuel at target gas turbine pressure and temperatures. Results of the testing show that small-scale fuel-air mixing can deliver a reliable, low-NOx solution to hydrogen combustion in advanced gas turbines.


Author(s):  
Jianfan Wu ◽  
Phillip Brown ◽  
Ihor Diakunchak ◽  
Anil Gulati ◽  
Martin Lenze ◽  
...  

Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technology makes possible the utilization of low cost coal and opportunity fuels, such as petroleum coke, residual oil and biomass, for clean efficient and cost effective electricity generation. Siemens is a leading supplier of products and services for IGCC plants and it is adapting its most advanced gas turbines for successful integration into IGCC plants. To expedite this, Siemens is pursuing combustion system development for application in IGCC plants operating on syngas/hydrogen fuels. Detailed combustion system testing has been carried out during 2005 and 2006 on syngas/hydrogen fuels derived from different feed stocks and gasification processes. The test programs addressed both the F- and G-Class firing temperatures and operating conditions. Fuel transfer capability to and from natural gas, which is the startup and backup fuel, and syngas was explored over the operating range. Optimization studies were carried out with different diluent (H2O and N2) addition rates to determine the effect on emissions and operability. The focus of this development was to ensure that only combustion system modifications would be required for successful enriched hydrogen syngas fuel operation. This paper summarizes the results from the Siemens combustion system development programs to demonstrate that low emissions and wide engine operating range can be achieved on hydrogen fuel operation in advanced 50 Hz and 60 Hz gas turbines in IGCC applications with carbon dioxide capture.


Author(s):  
Atanu Kundu ◽  
Jens Klingmann ◽  
Arman Ahamed Subash ◽  
Robert Collin

Gas turbines are widely used power generation equipment and very important for its efficiency and flexible operability. With the increasing demand of low carbon or less greenhouse gas emission from gas turbine, usage of clean fuel (i.e. hydrogen) is highly recommended. Adaptation with various type of fuels without any operability issues are the primary focus of interest while design and development of a low NOx gas turbine combustion system. Due to chemical and physical property variation of different fuel, a common combustion system design is complex and require extensive testing. The present paper is focused on fuel flexibility of an industrial prototype burner, designed and manufactured by Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery AB, Sweden. In this work, a baseline case (Methane fuel) is compared with different custom fuel blends (mixture of methane with natural gas and hydrogen). The primary and secondary combustion characteristics were modified when hydrogen blended fuels were introduced. The Lean Blowout limit was extended for the primary and secondary flames. The secondary flame macro structure was captured using Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence and natural luminosity imaging; whereas primary flame location was characterized by the thermocouple readings. Operational stability map and emission (NOx and CO) capability of the burner was determined from the experiment. Numerical calculation using ANSYS FLUENT was performed to simulate the combustion process and compare the results with experiment. The experimental and simulation effort provided information about the flame macrostructure and operability (lean operability limit was extended by 100 K) of the new technology burner when the combustion system was exposed to different type of fuels.


Author(s):  
William D. York ◽  
Willy S. Ziminsky ◽  
Ertan Yilmaz

Interest in hydrogen as a primary fuel stream in heavy-duty gas turbine engines has increased as pre-combustion carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has become a viable option for integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants. The US Department of Energy has funded the Advanced IGCC/Hydrogen Gas Turbine Program since 2005 with an aggressive plant-level NOx target of 2 ppm @ 15% O2 for an advanced gas turbine cycle. Approaching this NOx level with highly-reactive hydrogen fuel at the conditions required is a formidable challenge that requires novel combustion technology. This study begins by measuring entitlement NOx emissions from perfectly-premixed combustion of the high-hydrogen fuels of interest. A new premixing fuel injector for high-hydrogen fuels was designed to balance reliable, flashback-free operation, reasonable pressure drop, and low emissions. The concept relies on distributed, small-scale jet-in-crossflow mixing that is a departure from traditional swirl-based premixing concepts. Single nozzle rig experiments were conducted at pressures of 10 atm and 17 atm, with air preheat temperatures of about 650K. With nitrogen-diluted hydrogen fuel, characteristic of carbon-free syngas, stable operation without flashback was conducted up to flame temperatures of approximately 1850K. In addition to the effects of operating pressure, the impact of minor constituents in the fuel — carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane — on flame holding in the premixer is presented. The new fuel injector concept has been incorporated into a full-scale, multi-nozzle combustor can with an energy conversion rate of more than 10 MW at F-class conditions. The full-can testing was conducted at full gas turbine conditions and various fuel compositions of hydrogen, natural gas, and nitrogen. This combustion system has accumulated over 100 hours of fired testing at full-load with hydrogen comprising over 90 percent of the reactants by volume. NOx emissions (ppm) have been measured in the single digits with hydrogen-nitrogen fuel at target gas turbine pressure and temperatures. Results of the testing show that small-scale fuel-air mixing can deliver a reliable, low-NOx solution to hydrogen combustion in advanced gas turbines.


Author(s):  
Sachin Menon ◽  
Thijs Bouten ◽  
Jan Withag ◽  
Sikke Klein ◽  
Arvind Gangoli Rao

Abstract The combustion properties of hydrogen make premixed hydrogen-air flames prone to flashback. Several combustor concepts have been proposed and studied in the past few years to tackle the problem of flame flashback in premixed high hydrogen fuel combustors. This study looks at one of the concepts which uses the Aerodynamically Trapped Vortex to stabilize the flame. Burner concepts based on trapped vortex flame stabilization have a higher resistance towards flame blowout than conventional swirl stabilized burners. This work looks at the flow and flame behavior in the proposed Aerodynamically Trapped Vortex Combustor for 100% premixed hydrogen operation. Numerical simulations for the analysis were performed with the commercial CFD simulation package AVL FIRE™. The flow field characterization was focused on the investigation of the influence of both the inlet velocity and inlet turbulence intensity on the mean velocity, wall velocity gradient and turbulence intensity in the combustor. To study the flame stabilization mechanism, reactive simulations were performed at two fuel equivalence ratios. The combustion regime of the flame, turbulent flame speed and temperature distribution in the combustor were quantified from the simulation results. Combustion is modelled using a detailed chemistry solver with the k–ε turbulence model to resolve turbulence. No additional turbulence-chemistry interaction model is used in the current research. To reduce chemistry computational time, the multi-zone method is employed. To capture the effect of preferential diffusion, two approaches were used to quantify the diffusion coefficient of each species. The diffusion coefficients were calculated using both mixture averaged approach and the multi component diffusion approach. The proposed design for the Aero-dynamically Trapped Vortex combustor was able to stabilize a 100% premixed hydrogen flame without flashback for the simulated conditions.


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