Lean Blowout Phenomena and Prior Detection of Lean Blowout in a Premixed Model Annular Combustor

Author(s):  
Arijit Bhattacharya ◽  
Bikash Gupta ◽  
Satyajit Hansda ◽  
Zohadul Haque ◽  
Ashish Kumar ◽  
...  

Abstract Strict emission norms in the last few decades have paved the path for adaptation of new low NoX emission alternatives to power generation and aircraft propulsion. Lean combustion is a very promising and practicable technology for reducing NOX reduction and also have very high fuel efficiency. However, lean combustion technology suffers from inherent combustion instabilities that are manifested under different conditions, most importantly, thermoacoustic instability and lean blowout. Lean blowout occurs when a gas turbine combustor operating close to lean limit, for lowest NoX emission, faces abrupt changes in fuel homogeneity, quality or flow rate. While many work have been done in thermo-acoustic instability and flame propagation in annular combustors, studies in lean blowout in annular combustors are very limited. The lean limit of combustors are not fixed and is dependent on fuel characteristics and operating condition including environmental effects. So accurate online prediction of lean limit is very important to keep the combustors operating safely near lean limit. Recent works have demonstrated that single burner combustors leave out a significant amounts of physics including interaction of flames from different burners prior to blowout. In this work, a stepped down swirl and bluff body stabilized annular combustor in CB configuration (having chamber and burner), is used as experimental test rig having 4 number of identical burners. Video and heat release data are taken at different conditions as lean blowout is approached. Frequent attachment and reattachment of the flames prior to lift off was seen. As lean blowout is approached, inherent subtle differences in the different burners get amplified when flame becomes sufficiently weak and flame symmetry is broken. As air fuel mixture is made gradually leaner, one by one the flames from different burners elongates although remains partially attached to burner. Further lowering the equivalence ratio results in lift off and merging of the flame fronts of different burners. Three pixel averaged color ratios are extracted from still camera RGB images as flame stability indicators which are, red by blue, red by green and blue by green. The parameters show marked change at the point of lift off as well as at the lean blowout point.

Author(s):  
T. Shudo ◽  
K. Omori ◽  
O. Hiyama

Hydrogen is expected as a clean and renewable alternative to the conventional hydrocarbon fuels. Because the only possible pollutants from the hydrogen combustion are nitrogen oxides (NOx), it is crucial to reduce the NOx emission in the hydrogen utilization. The rich-lean combustion is well known as a technique to reduce the emission of the Zel’dovich NO from the continuous combustion burners for such as gas turbines and boilers. Because the Zel’dovich NO occupies a large part of the total NOx emission, the rich-lean combustion is quite effective to reduce the NOx emission. However, the NOx reduction effect of the rich-lean combustion has not yet been proven for the hydrogen fuel, while the effect has been demonstrated for the hydrocarbon fuels. On the other hand, the prompt NO is emitted from the hydrocarbon combustion especially under the fuel-rich conditions. Though the amount of the prompt NO is quite small for premixed or diffusion combustion, it could be a relatively significant part in the total NO emission from the rich-lean combustion due to the decreased Zel’dovich NO. The authors estimate that hydrogen is more suitable for the rich-lean combustion compared with hydrocarbons, because hydrogen does not emit the prompt NO even under the fuel-rich conditions which necessarily exist in the rich-lean combustion. This research proposes the rich-lean combustion as a method to reduce the NOx emission from hydrogen combustion and experimentally analyzes the characteristics using a coaxial rich-lean burner with varying the mixture conditions.


Energies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 2173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yafei Zhang ◽  
Rui Luo ◽  
Yihua Dou ◽  
Qulan Zhou

A swirling burner with a variable inner secondary air (ISA) flaring angle β is proposed and a laboratory scale opposed-firing furnace is built. Temperature distribution and NOx emission are designedly measured. The combustion characteristics affected by variable β are experimentally evaluated from ignition and burnout data. Meanwhile, NOx reduction by the variable β is analyzed through emissions measurements. Different inner/outer primary coal-air concentration ratios γ, thermal loads and coal types are considered in this study. Results indicate that β variation provides a new approach to promote ignition and burnout, as well as NOx emission reduction under conditions of fuel rich/lean combustion and load variation. The recommended β of a swirling burner under different conditions is not always constant. The optimal βopt of the swirling burner under all conditions for different burning performance are summarized in the form of curves, which could provide reference for exquisite combustion adjustment.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
C P Premchand ◽  
Manikandan Raghunathan ◽  
Midhun Raghunath ◽  
K V Reeja ◽  
Sujith R I ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Bhaskar Tamma ◽  
Juan Carlos Alvarez ◽  
Aaron J. Simon

Reduction in emissions, especially NOx has been the main study of various engine researchers in the light of stringent emission norms. To reduce the time and cost involved in testing these technologies, engine thermodynamic cycle predictive tools are used. The present work uses one such predictive tool (GT Power from Gamma Technologies) for predicting the influence of water addition in a turbocharged 6-cylinder diesel engine intake on engine performance and NOx emissions. The experiments for comparison with modeling included the introduction of liquid water in the engine intake stream, between the compressor and intercooler ranging from 0 to 100% of fuel flow rate. NOx emission reduced linearly with water addition with reduction of 63% with less than 1% penalty on fuel efficiency at 100% water addition. The GT Power model predicted the performance within 5% of experimental data and NOx emission within 10% of the experiments.


2013 ◽  
Vol 864-867 ◽  
pp. 1626-1629
Author(s):  
Hai Bing Liu ◽  
Xiao Dong Chen ◽  
Jun Gu

The paper first discusses the relativity between alternative combustion andNOx emissions by a test in dry cement kiln, and a lot of case on fuel alternative The main findings of the study are that the use of RDF in cement kilns instead of coal or coke offers environmental benefits and reduce NOx emission. The conclusion is that the NOx generation can probably be lower because of lower flame temperatures or lower air excess and low nitrogen content in comparison with fossil fuels also is impartment reason., another a fact that most of the nitrogen (N) in biomass is released as ammonia (NH3) which acts as a reducing agent with NOx to form nitrogen (N2).


1985 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 739-743 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Mulholland ◽  
W. S. Lanier

A 730 kW (2.5 × 106 Btu/hr) firetube package boiler was used to demonstrate the application of reburning for NOx emission control. An overall reduction of 50 percent from an uncontrolled NOx emission of 200 ppm was realized by diverting 15 percent of the total boiler load to a natural-gas-fired second stage burner. Tests indicate that the overall reaction order of destruction with respect to initial NOx is greater than one; thus, larger reductions can be expected from reburning applications to systems with higher initial NOx. Rich zone stoichiometry has been identified as the dominant process variable. Primary zone stoichiometry and rich zone residence time are parameters that can be adjusted to maximize NOx reduction. Reburning applied to firetube package boilers requires minimal facility modification. Natural gas would appear to be an ideal reburning fuel as nitrogen in the reburning fuel has been shown to inhibit NOx reduction.


Author(s):  
Oanh Nguyen ◽  
Scott Samuelsen

In view of increasingly stringent NOx emissions regulations on stationary gas turbines, lean combustion offers an attractive option to reduce reaction temperatures and thereby decrease NOx production. Under lean operation, however, the reaction is vulnerable to blowout. It is herein postulated that pilot hydrogen dopant injection, discretely located, can enhance the lean blowout performance without sacrificing overall performance. The present study addresses this hypothesis in a research combustor assembly, operated at atmospheric pressure, and fired on natural gas using rapid mixing injection, typical of commercial units. Five hydrogen injector scenarios are investigated. The results show that (1) pilot hydrogen dopant injection, discretely located, leads to improved lean blowout performance and (2) the location of discrete injection has a significant impact on the effectiveness of the doping strategy.


Author(s):  
C. P. Premchand ◽  
Manikandan Raghunathan ◽  
Midhun Raghunath ◽  
K. V. Reeja ◽  
R. I. Sujith ◽  
...  

Abstract The tonal sound production during thermoacoustic instability is detrimental to the components of gas turbine and rocket engines. Identifying the root cause and controlling this oscillatory instability would enable manufacturers to save in costs of power outages and maintenance. An optimal method is to identify the structures in the flow-field that are critical to tonal sound production and perform control measures to disrupt those “critical structures”. Passive control experiments were performed by injecting a secondary micro-jet of air onto the identified regions with critical structures in the flow-field of a bluff-body stabilized, dump, turbulent combustor. Simultaneous measurements such as unsteady pressure, velocity, local and global heat release rate fluctuations are acquired in the regime of thermoacoustic instability before and after control action. The tonal sound production in this combustor is accompanied by a periodic flapping of the shear layer present in the region between the dump plane (backward-facing step) and the leading edge of the bluff-body. We obtain the trajectory of Lagrangian saddle points that dictate the flow and flame dynamics in the shear layer during thermoacoustic instability accurately by computing Lagrangian Coherent Structures. Upon injecting a secondary micro-jet with a mass flow rate of only 4% of the primary flow, nearly 90% suppression in the amplitude of pressure fluctuations are observed. The suppression thus results in sound pressure levels comparable to those obtained during stable operation of the combustor. Using Morlet wavelet transform, we see that the coherence in the dominant frequency of pressure and heat release rate oscillations during thermoacoustic instability is affected by secondary injection. The disruption of saddle point trajectories breaks the positive feedback loop between pressure and heat release rate fluctuations resulting in the observed break of coherence. Wavelet transform of global heat release rate shows a redistribution of energy content from the dominant instability frequency (acoustic time scale) to other time scales.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
C P Premchand ◽  
Manikandan Raghunathan ◽  
Midhun Raghunath ◽  
K V Reeja ◽  
Sujith R I ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Hossam Elasrag ◽  
Shaoping Li

Simulations for the Cambridge swirl bluff-body spray burner are performed near blow-out conditions. A hybrid stress blended eddy simulation (SBES) model is utilized for sub-grid turbulence closure. SBES blends the RANS-SST model at the boundary layer with large eddy simulation dynamic Smagorinsky model outside the boundary layer. The injected N-heptane spray droplets are tracked using a typical Eulerian-Lagrangian approach. Heat transfer coupling between the bluff-body walls and the near-walls fluid is accounted for by coupling the solid and fluid energy equations at the bluff-body surface. Mixing and chemistry are modeled using the Flamelet Generated Manifold (FGM) model. The study investigates how successful the FGM model is in predicting finite rate effects like local extinction and flame lift-off height. To this end, two near blow-out spray flames, the H1S1 (75% to blow-out) and H1S2 (88% to blow-out) are simulated. Good results are shown matching the spray Sauter mean diameter (SMD) and axial velocity mean and rms experimental data. The results also show that the FGM model captured reasonably well the flame structure and lift-off height as well as the spray pattern. Overall the spray droplets mean D32 and mean axial velocity were under-predicted, while the rms distribution matched reasonably well for the H1S1 flame. The mean flame brush lift-off height is estimated based on the statistically stationary mean flame brush and is estimated to be around 6 mm from the bluff-body base. Instantaneous local flame extinction is observed. The H1S2 flame, however, showed similar but slightly better match with the measurements for the mean spray data compared to the H1S1 flame, with slight under-prediction for D32 at Z = 10 mm and Z = 20 mm. Future work will investigate the sensitivity of the simulation to the spray boundary conditions and grid resolution.


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