Investigation on Flat-Fan Spray Characterization in High-Speed Air Coflow for Gas Turbine Online Water Washing Application

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiran Kumar ◽  
Vasudev Chaudhari ◽  
Srikrishna Sahu ◽  
Ravindra G. Devi

Abstract Fouling in compressor blades due to dirt deposition is a major issue in land-based gas turbines as it impedes the compressor performance and degrades the overall engine efficiency. The online water washing approach is an effective alternate for early-stage compressor blade cleaning and to optimize the time span between offline washing and peak availability. In such case, typically a series of flat-fan nozzles are used at the engine bell mouth to inject water sprays into the inflowing air. However, optimizing the injector operating conditions is not a straightforward task mainly due to the tradeoff between blade cleaning effectiveness and material erosion. In this context, the knowledge on spray characteristics prior to blade impingement play a vital role, and the experimental spray characterization is crucial not only to understand the basic process but also to validate numerical models and simulations. The present paper investigates spray characteristics in a single flat-fan nozzle operated in the presence of a coflowing air within a wind-tunnel. A parametric investigation is carried out using different air flow velocity in the tunnel and inlet water temperature, while the liquid flow rate was maintained constant. The spray cone angle and liquid breakup length are measured using back-lit photography. The high-speed shadowgraphy technique is used for capturing the droplet images downstream of the injector exit. The images are processed following depth-of-filed correction to measure droplet size distribution. Droplet velocity is measured by the particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) technique. As both droplet size and velocity are known, the cross-stream evolution of local droplet mass and momentum flux are obtained at different axial locations which form the basis for studying the effectiveness of the blade cleaning process due to droplet impingement on a coupon coated with foulant of known mass.

2014 ◽  
Vol 1078 ◽  
pp. 271-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu Qiang Wu ◽  
Qian Wang ◽  
Zhi Sheng Gao ◽  
Zhou Rong Zhang ◽  
Li Ming Dai

Experimental study on macroscopic spray characteristics of a certain type of domestic common rail injectors under the conditions of different injection pressures was carried out through a high-speed digital camera. Furthermore, a fuel dripping phenomenon at the end stage of injection was observed through the high-speed digital camera equipped with a long-distance microscope, and a further analysis of the phenomenon was made. The results show the increase in the injection pressure can evidently enhance spray cone angle and expand the scope of spray field in combustion chamber, which is conducive to air-fuel mixture. The spray cone angle during the development spray shows a double-peak shape. And the long response-time of seating of solenoid valve core that disables the injection cutting off in time is one of factors causing fuel dripping phenomenon.


Author(s):  
Dieter Bohn ◽  
James Willie

This paper describes the development of an atomization model for implementation in a CFD solver. The model is developed for application in a matrix burner that is suitable for simulating the conditions prevailing in stationary gas turbines. The fuel considered is diesel and the matrix burner is designed using the Lean Premixed Prevaporized (LPP) concept. In this concept, the liquid fuel is first atomized, vaporized and thoroughly premixed with the oxidizer before it enters the combustion chamber. The injector used is a hollow-cone Schlick series 121–123 pressure-swirl atomizer. Extensive measurements are carried out at different atomization pressures to determine the right parameters like the nozzle diameter, atomization pressure and spray cone angle that will yield a good spray pattern. Based on the measurement data, the mass flow rate and the droplet size distribution are determined. The latter is determined by curve fitting the experimental data. The determined droplet size distribution is implemented in a Fortran subroutine that is hooked to the CFD solver. Cold flow CFD results are compared for different positions of the nozzle. The hot flow CFD results are also compared with the hot flow results obtained when the droplet size distribution is assumed to be uniform.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1008-1009 ◽  
pp. 1001-1005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Wu ◽  
Yang Hua ◽  
Zhan Cheng Wang ◽  
Li Li Zhu ◽  
Wei Wei Shang

In order to better research on the spray characteristics of biodiesel and n-butanol blends, an experimental study of spray characteristics of different fuel mixtures was investigated in a constant volume vessel using high speed photograph method, and analyzed the influence of different proportions of acidic oil biodiesel and n-butanol on the macroscopic parameters of spray penetration, spray cone angle and so on. The results show that with the increase of acidic oil biodiesel ratio, the air entrainment is weakened, spray penetration gradually increases and spray cone angle decreases under the same injection pressure and back pressure. After adding n-butanol in acidic oil biodiesel and diesel mixture fuel, the surrounding air entrainment is enhanced, and spray front end widen. With the increase of mixing ratio, spray penetration increases first, then decreases. The spray cone angle increases after adding n-butanol, and decreases with the increase of mixing ratio. The results show that adding n-butanol can be used as one of the methods to improve biodiesel spray characteristics.


2012 ◽  
Vol 225 ◽  
pp. 423-428
Author(s):  
Zulkifli Abdul Ghaffar ◽  
Ahmad Hussein Abdul Hamid ◽  
Mohd Syazwan Firdaus Mat Rashid

Injector is one of the vital devices in liquid rocket engine (LRE) as small changes in its configurations and design can result in significantly different LRE performance. Characteristics of spray such as spray cone angle, breakup length and Sauter mean diameter (SMD) are examples of crucial parameters that play the important role in the performance of liquid propellant rocket engine. Wider spray cone angle is beneficial for widespread of fuel in the combustion chamber for fast quiet ignition and a shorter breakup length provides shorter combustion chamber to be utilized and small SMD will result in fast and clean combustion. There are several mechanisms of liquid atomization such as swirling, e.g. jet swirl atomization or introducing bubbles into the liquid and effervescent atomization. Introducing a swirl component in the flow can enhance the propellant atomization and mixing whereas introducing bubbling gas directly into the liquid stream inside the injector leads to finer sprays even at lower injection pressures. This paper reviews the influence of both operating conditions and injector internal geometries towards the spray characteristics of swirl effervescent injectors. Operating conditions reviewed are injection pressure and gas-to-liquid ratio (GLR), while the injector internal geometries reviewed are limited to swirler geometry, mixing chamber diameter (dc), mixing chamber length (lc), aeration hole diameter (da), discharge orifice diameter (do) and discharge orifice length (lo).


Author(s):  
Luis G. Gutierrez ◽  
Mohammad Fatouraie ◽  
Steve B. Xiao ◽  
Margaret S. Wooldridge ◽  
Dong Han ◽  
...  

Achieving efficient and clean combustion of biodiesel as a renewable source of energy requires a fundamental understanding of the effects of the different thermophysical properties on the fuel injection process at conditions relevant to diesel engines. In this study, the spray characteristics of two fatty acid esters, methyl oleate and ethyl oleate, are compared to a baseline diesel fuel using high-speed imaging of the sprays in a constant volume chamber. A single hole fuel injector with a nozzle diameter of 280 μm was used with a single injection event with a duration of 1.0 ms. The spray development was investigated for fuel-rail pressures of 40, 60, 80 and 100 MPa and the chamber gas densities of 1.15 kg/m3, 5.75 kg/m3 and 11.5 kg/m3. High-speed shadowgraph imaging of the non-vaporizing sprays was performed at 15,000 frames per second. Image processing algorithms were developed to quantify the spray penetration distance, penetration rate and cone angle as a function of time for the injection process. Penetration distance and penetration rate results were similar for the esters and diesel fuel for the range of experimental conditions studied. However, diesel had a larger spray cone angle compared to both esters. Additionally a novel metric for air entrainment was developed based on the macro-scale features of the spray. The integrated mixing volume metric showed no difference in air entrainment between the fuels, which is in good agreement with the behavior expected based on spray theory.


Author(s):  
Arvind K. Jasuja ◽  
Arthur H. Lefebvre

A single-component PDPA is used to evaluate the spray characteristics of a simplex pressure-swirl atomizer when operating at high liquid flow rates and elevated ambient air pressures. Attention is focused on the effects of air pressure on mean drop size, drop-size distribution, mean velocity, volume flux, and number density. Using a constant flow rate of 75 g/s, measurements are carried out along the spray radii at a fixed distance downstream from the atomizer face of 50 mm. The air pressures of 1, 8, and 12 bars chosen for these tests correspond to air densities of 1.2, 9.6, and 14.4 kg/m3. The purpose of the investigation is to supplement the existing body of information on pressure-swirl spray characteristics, most of which were obtained at normal atmospheric ambient pressures, with new data that correspond more closely to the conditions prevailing in the primary combustion zones of modern gas turbines. The results obtained are explained mainly in terms of the influence of air pressure on spray structure, in particular spray cone angle and Weber number.


Author(s):  
Bolun Yi ◽  
Wei Fu ◽  
Lanbo Song ◽  
Fengyu Li ◽  
Tao Liu ◽  
...  

The aim of this study was to investigate the spray characteristics of biodiesel and n-butanol/biodiesel blended fuel. The spray tip penetration and the spray cone angle were tested and analyzed. A constant volume chamber and high-speed camera were used to observe the spray evolution and a common-rail system was employed to change the injection pressure. The results show that the spray tip penetration and the spray cone angle of biodiesel are larger than those of blended fuel in most cases. n-Butanol additive changes the relationship between angle and density ratio to a certain degree. The experimental trend lines support the penetration model proposed by Hiroyasu and Arai in terms of similar proportional relation on time after start of injection, and the empirical equations provide reasonable agreement with the experimental data of the spray tip penetration.


Author(s):  
D Mondal ◽  
A Datta ◽  
A Sarkar

The present work has attempted a unification of the empirical spray parameters for the pressure swirl atomizers with the maximum entropy formalism principle for the predictions of both size and velocity distributions in a spray. The information entropy is maximized under suitable constraint conditions to evaluate a number-based droplet size and velocity joint distribution parameter. The constraint equations have been defined to include the spray parameters, such as the Sauter mean diameter, spray cone angle and liquid film thickness, to consider their influence on the distribution. A comparison of the predicted results using the present theory is made with the experimental data available in the literature and good agreement is achieved. The effects of the atomizer input conditions, such as injection pressure, ambient pressure and the properties of atomizing liquids, on the size and velocity distributions are studied using the present model. A calculation of the efficiency of the atomization process using the size and velocity distribution functions is also made to study the effect of operating conditions on the performance of atomization.


2014 ◽  
Vol 960-961 ◽  
pp. 1394-1399
Author(s):  
Jian Wu ◽  
Li Li Zhu ◽  
Zhan Cheng Wang ◽  
Bin Xu ◽  
Hong Ming Wang

we studied the spray characteristics of n-butanol/diesel fuel blends using a high-speed camera and schlieren system, and analyzed the effect of different fuels, ambient pressure and injection pressure conditions on the spray penetration, spray cone angle, spray area, et al. The results showed that, at the same injection pressure, as the increase of ambient pressure, the spray cone angle of the same volume of fuel increases gradually, the spray penetration and the spray area decreases; under the same ambient pressure, the spray penetration, spray cone angle and spray area increase gradually with the increasing injection pressure, but when the injection pressure increases enough, the parameters are roughly the same; and the parameters basically all increase with the adding of n-butanol.


2017 ◽  
Vol 140 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph A. Schmalhofer ◽  
Peter Griebel ◽  
Manfred Aigner

The use of highly reactive hydrogen-rich fuels in lean premixed combustion systems strongly affects the operability of stationary gas turbines (GT) resulting in higher autoignition and flashback risks. The present study investigates the autoignition behavior and ignition kernel evolution of hydrogen–nitrogen fuel mixtures in an inline co-flow injector configuration at relevant reheat combustor operating conditions. High-speed luminosity and particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements in an optically accessible reheat combustor are employed. Autoignition and flame stabilization limits strongly depend on temperatures of vitiated air and carrier preheating. Higher hydrogen content significantly promotes the formation and development of different types of autoignition kernels: More autoignition kernels evolve with higher hydrogen content showing the promoting effect of equivalence ratio on local ignition events. Autoignition kernels develop downstream a certain distance from the injector, indicating the influence of ignition delay on kernel development. The development of autoignition kernels is linked to the shear layer development derived from global experimental conditions.


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