scholarly journals Two-step approach for pressure oscillations prediction in gas turbine combustion chambers

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 424-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmytro Iurashev ◽  
Giovanni Campa ◽  
Vyacheslav V Anisimov ◽  
Ezio Cosatto
Keyword(s):  
Transfer Function ◽  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Navier Stokes ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Combustion Instabilities ◽  
Combustion Chambers ◽  
Step Method ◽  
Pressure Oscillations ◽  
Set Up

Currently, gas turbine manufacturers frequently face the problem of strong acoustic combustion-driven oscillations inside combustion chambers. These combustion instabilities can cause extensive wear and sometimes even catastrophic damage of combustion hardware. This requires prevention of combustion instabilities, which, in turn, requires reliable and fast predictive tools. We have developed a two-step method to find a set of operating parameters under which gas turbines can be operated without going into self-excited pressure oscillations. As the first step, an unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulation with the flame speed closure model implemented in the OpenFOAM® environment is performed to obtain the flame transfer function of the combustion set-up. As the second step time-domain simulations employing low-order network model implemented in Simulink® are executed. In this work, we apply the proposed method to the Beschaufelter RingSpalt test rig developed at the Technische Universität München. The sensitivity of thermoacoustic stability to the length of a combustion chamber, flame position, gain and phase of flame transfer function and outlet reflection coefficient are studied.

Application of a 1-D Predicting Tool to the Analysis of Pressure Oscillations in an Industrial Gas Turbine Combustor: GE10 Machine

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Asti ◽  
Luca Mangani ◽  
Antonio Andreini
Keyword(s):  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Equivalent Model ◽  
Design Phase ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
Combustion Instabilities ◽  
Pressure Oscillations ◽  
Lean Premixed ◽  
Good Agreement

The development of current industrial gas turbines is strictly constrained by legislative requirements for low polluting emissions. Lean Premixed combustion technology has become through the years the necessary standard to meet such requirements. Premixed technology introduces a new range of problems: combustion instabilities in many operating conditions. Specifically, lean premixed flames pose the threat of pressure oscillations. This phenomenon is the effect of the strong interaction between combustion heat-release and fluid dynamics aspects. The prediction of acoustic oscillations and combustion instabilities is generally difficult because of the complexity of real combustor geometries. As a result, the design phase is usually performed as a trial-and-error task: a specific design is constructed, tested and modified, in a process that continues until acceptable results are found. A specific tool was developed by GE Energy to help predicting the acoustic behaviour of newly designed partially-premixed combustors, avoiding the traditional trial-and-error process: the tool allows the designer to analyze the problem of combustion instabilities since the early design phase, limiting subsequent testing efforts. A mono-dimensional tool based on the 1-D acoustic model was developed by GE Energy and was applied to the single-can combustor of the GE10 machine (a gas turbine in the 10MW class). All the main geometrical features of the GE10 machine, including fuel line geometry, were considered and modeled in a one-dimensional scheme, in order to build an equivalent model for the linear tool analysis. The main frequencies, measured during tests on the GE10 machine, were compared to the numerical results of the tool, showing good agreement between numerical and experimental results and confirming the predictive capability. This good agreement demonstrates that the model can be used for predicting the effects of design changes, with a reduced need of tests.

scholarly journals Acoustic Instabilities in Syngas Fired Combustion Chambers

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sikke A. Klein ◽  
Jim B. W. Kok
Keyword(s):  
Transfer Function ◽  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Transfer Functions ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Cfd Modeling ◽  
Combustion Instabilities ◽  
Control Loop ◽  
Test Rig ◽  
Combustion Chambers ◽  
Acoustic Instabilities

Gas turbines fired on syngas may show thermo-acoustic combustion instabilities. The theory on these instabilities is well developed. From this theory it can be shown that the acoustic system of a combustion installation can be described as a control loop with a set of transfer functions. The transfer function of the flame plays a decisive role in the occurrence of combustion instabilities. It is however very difficult to predict this flame transfer function analytically. In this paper a numerical method will be presented to calculate the flame transfer function from time-dependent combustion calculations. Also an experimental method will be discussed to determine this flame transfer function. Experiments have been performed in a 25 kW atmospheric test rig. Also calculations have been done for this situation. The agreement between the measurements and CFD calculations is good, especially for the phase at higher frequencies. This opens the way to apply CFD-modeling for acoustics in a real gas turbine situation.

scholarly journals Measurement of Air-Fuel Ratio Fluctuations Caused by Combustor Driven Oscillations

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajiv Mongia ◽  
Robert Dibble ◽  
Jeff Lovett
Keyword(s):  
Power Spectrum ◽  
Mole Fraction ◽  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Premixed Combustion ◽  
Pollutant Emissions ◽  
Combustion Instabilities ◽  
Pressure Oscillations ◽  
Lean Premixed Combustion ◽  
Lean Premixed

Lean premixed combustion has emerged as a method of achieving low pollutant emissions from gas turbines. A common problem of lean premixed combustion is combustion instability. As conditions inside lean premixed combustors approach the lean flammability limit, large pressure variations are encountered. As a consequence, certain desirable gas turbine operating regimes are not approachable. In minimizing these regimes, combustor designers must rely upon trial and error because combustion instabilities are not well understood (and thus difficult to model). When they occur, pressure oscillations in the combustor can induce fluctuations in fuel mole fraction that can augment the pressure oscillations (undesirable) or dampen the pressure oscillations (desirable). In this paper, we demonstrate a method for measuring the fuel mole fraction oscillations which occur in the premixing section during combustion instabilities produced in the combustor that is downstream of the premixer. The fuel mole fraction in the premixer is measured with kHz resolution by the absorption of light from a 3.39 μm He-Ne laser. A sudden expansion combustor is constructed to demonstrate this fuel mole fraction measurement technique. Under several operating conditions, we measure significant fuel mole fraction fluctuations that are caused by pressure oscillations in the combustion chamber. Since the fuel mole fraction is sampled continuously, a power spectrum is easily generated. The fuel mole fraction power spectrum clearly indicates fuel mole fraction fluctuation frequencies are the same as the pressure fluctuation frequencies under some operating conditions.

Modeling Unsteady Flow of a Lean Partially Premixed Flame on a Dry Low NOx Combustion System

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salvatore Matarazzo ◽  
Hannes Laget ◽  
Evert Vanderhaegen ◽  
Jim B. W. Kok
Keyword(s):  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Limit Cycle ◽  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Premixed Flame ◽  
Computational Domain ◽  
Pressure Oscillations ◽  
Combustion Dynamics ◽  
Partially Premixed ◽  
Partially Premixed Flame ◽  
Limit Cycle Behavior

The phenomenon of combustion dynamics (CD) is one of the most important operational challenges facing the gas turbine (GT) industry today. The Limousine project, a Marie Curie Initial Training network funded by the European Commission, focuses on the understanding of the limit cycle behavior of unstable pressure oscillations in gas turbines, and on the resulting mechanical vibrations and materials fatigue. In the framework of this project, a full transient CFD analysis for a Dry Low NOx combustor in a heavy duty gas turbine has been performed. The goal is to gain insight on the thermo-acoustic instability development mechanisms and limit cycle oscillations. The possibility to use numerical codes for complex industrial cases involving fuel staging, fluid-structure interaction, fuel quality variation and flexible operations has been also addressed. The unsteady U-RANS approach used to describe the high-swirled lean partially premixed flame is presented and the results on the flow characteristics as vortex core generation, vortex shedding, flame pulsation are commented on with respect to monitored parameters during operations of the GT units at Electrabel/GDF-SUEZ sites. The time domain pressure oscillations show limit cycle behavior. By means of Fourier analysis, the coupling frequencies caused by the thermo-acoustic feedback between the acoustic resonances of the chamber and the flame heat release has been detected. The possibility to reduce the computational domain to speed up computations, as done in other works in literature, has been investigated.

scholarly journals Application of a three-step approach for prediction of combustion instabilities in industrial gas turbine burners

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. JCW78T
Author(s):  
Dmytro Iurashev ◽  
Giovanni Campa ◽  
Vyacheslav V. Anisimov ◽  
Ezio Cosatto ◽  
Luca Rofi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Time Lag ◽  
High Amplitude ◽  
Combustion Regime ◽  
Industrial Test ◽  
Distributed Model ◽  
Combustion Instabilities ◽  
Acoustic Oscillations ◽  
Analytical Time

Abstract Recently, because of environmental regulations, gas turbine manufacturers are restricted to produce machines that work in the lean combustion regime. Gas turbines operating in this regime are prone to combustion-driven acoustic oscillations referred as combustion instabilities. These oscillations could have such high amplitude that they can damage gas turbine hardware. In this study, the three-step approach for combustion instabilities prediction is applied to an industrial test rig. As the first step, the flame transfer function (FTF) of the burner is obtained performing unsteady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. As the second step, the obtained FTF is approximated with an analytical time-lag-distributed model. The third step is the time-domain simulations using a network model. The obtained results are compared against the experimental data. The obtained results show a good agreement with the experimental ones and the developed approach is able to predict thermoacoustic instabilities in gas turbines combustion chambers.

Measurement and Analysis of Flame Transfer Function in a Sector Combustor Under High Pressure Conditions

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. S. Cheung ◽  
G. J. M. Sims ◽  
R. W. Copplestone ◽  
J. R. Tilston ◽  
C. W. Wilson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Transfer Function ◽  
Heat Release ◽  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Mass Flow ◽  
Atmospheric Pressure ◽  
Acoustic Waves ◽  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Transfer Functions ◽  
Unsteady Pressure

Lean premixed prevaporised (LPP) combustion can reduce NOx emissions from gas turbines, but often leads to combustion instability. A flame transfer function describes the change in the rate of heat release in response to perturbations in the inlet flow as a function of frequency. It is a quantitative assessment of the susceptibility of combustion to disturbances. The resulting fluctuations will in turn generate more acoustic waves and in some situations self-sustained oscillations can result. Flame transfer functions for LPP combustion are poorly understood at present but are crucial for predicting combustion oscillations. This paper describes an experiment designed to measure the flame transfer function of a simple combustor incorporating realistic components. Tests were conducted initially on this combustor at atmospheric pressure (1.2 bar and 550 K) to make an early demonstration of the combustion system. The test rig consisted of a plenum chamber with an inline siren, followed by a single LPP premixer/duct and a combustion chamber with a silencer to prevent natural instabilities. The siren was used to induce variable frequency pressure/acoustic signals into the air approaching the combustor. Both unsteady pressure and heat release measurements were undertaken. There was good coherence between the pressure and heat release signals. At each test frequency, two unsteady pressure measurements in the plenum were used to calculate the acoustic waves in this chamber and hence estimate the mass-flow perturbation at the fuel injection point inside the LPP duct. The flame transfer function relating the heat release perturbation to this mass flow was found as a function of frequency. The same combustor hardware and associated instrumentation were then used for the high pressure (15 bar and 800 K) tests. Flame transfer function measurements were taken at three combustion conditions that simulated the staging point conditions (Idle, Approach and Take-off) of a large turbofan gas turbine. There was good coherence between pressure and heat release signals at Idle, indicating a close relationship between acoustic and heat release processes. Problems were encountered at high frequencies for the Approach and Take-off conditions, but the flame transfer function for the Idle case had very good qualitative agreement with the atmospheric-pressure tests. The flame transfer functions calculated here could be used directly for predicting combustion oscillations in gas turbine using the same LPP duct at the same operating conditions. More importantly they can guide work to produce a general analytical model.

Experimental Development of On-Line Flame Transfer Function Measurements for Fielded Gas Turbines

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin Matthews ◽  
Anna Cobb ◽  
Subodh Adhikari ◽  
David Wu ◽  
Tim Lieuwen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Transfer Function ◽  
Heat Release ◽  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Gas Turbines ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Transfer Functions ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Fuel Injector ◽  
Experimental Development ◽  
On Line

Abstract Understanding thermoacoustic instabilities is essential for the reliable operation of gas turbine engines. To complicate this understanding, the extreme sensitivity of gas turbine combustors can lead to instability characteristics that differ across a fleet. The capability to monitor flame transfer functions in fielded engines would provide valuable data to improve this understanding and aid in gas turbine operability from R&D to field tuning. This paper presents a new experimental facility used to analyze performance of full-scale gas turbine fuel injector hardware at elevated pressure and temperature. It features a liquid cooled, fiber-coupled probe that provides direct optical access to the heat release zone for high-speed chemiluminescence measurements. The probe was designed with fielded applications in mind. In addition, the combustion chamber includes an acoustic sensor array and a large objective window for verification of the probe using high-speed chemiluminescence imaging. This work experimentally demonstrates the new setup under scaled engine conditions, with a focus on operational zones that yield interesting acoustic tones. Results include a demonstration of the probe, preliminary analysis of acoustic and high speed chemiluminescence data, and high speed chemiluminescence imaging. The novelty of this paper is the deployment of a new test platform that incorporates full-scale engine hardware and provides the ability to directly compare acoustic and heat release response in a high-temperature, high-pressure environment to determine the flame transfer functions. This work is a stepping-stone towards the development of an on-line flame transfer function measurement technique for production engines in the field.

Numerical Assessment of SCAP: A Passive System for Preventing Thermoacoustic Oscillations in Gas Turbine Annular Combustors

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Tiribuzi
Keyword(s):  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Research Unit ◽  
Combined Cycle ◽  
Computational Time ◽  
Computational Domain ◽  
Ambient Conditions ◽  
Pressure Oscillations ◽  
Operation Conditions ◽  
Thermoacoustic Oscillations

ENEL operates a dozen combined cycle units whose V94.3A gas turbines are equipped with annular combustors. In such lean premixed gas turbines, particular operation conditions could trigger large pressure oscillations due to thermoacoustic instabilities. The ENEL Research unit is studying this phenomenon in order to find out methods which could avoid or mitigate such events. The use of effective numerical analysis techniques allowed us to investigate the realistic time evolution and behaviour of the acoustic fields associated with this phenomenon. KIEN, an in-house low diffusive URANS code capable of simulating 3D reactive flows, has been used in the Very Rough Grid approach. This approach permits the simulation, with a reasonable computational time, of quite long real transients with a computational domain extended over all the resonant volumes involved in the acoustic phenomenon. The V94.3A gas turbine model was set up with a full combustor 3D grid, going from the compressor outlet up to the turbine inlet, including both the annular plenum and the annular combustion chamber. The grid extends over the entire circular angle, including all the 24 premixed burners. Numerical runs were performed with the normal V94.3A combustor configuration, with input parameters set so as no oscillations develop in the standard ambient conditions. Wide pressure oscillations on the contrary are associated with the circumferential acoustic modes of the combustor, which have their onset and grow when winter ambient conditions are assumed. These results also confirmed that the sustaining mechanism is based on the equivalence ratio fluctuation of premix mixture and that plenum plays an important role in such mechanism. Based on these findings, a system for controlling the thermoacoustic oscillation has been conceived (Patent Pending), which acts on the plenum side of the combustor. This system, called SCAP (Segmentation of Combustor Annular Plenum), is based on the subdivision of the plenum annular volume by means of a few meridionally oriented walls. Repetition of KIEN runs with a SCAP configuration, in which a suitable number of segmentation walls were properly arranged in the annular plenum, demonstrated the effectiveness of this solution in preventing the development of wide thermoacoustic oscillations in the combustor.

Investigation of Flow Instabilities Near the Rim Cavity of a 1.5 Stage Gas Turbine

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Rabs ◽  
F.-K. Benra ◽  
H. J. Dohmen ◽  
O. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Mass Flow ◽  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Flow Instabilities ◽  
Navier Stokes ◽  
Flow Rates ◽  
Air Mass ◽  
Hot Gas ◽  
Path Modelling ◽  
Mass Flow Rates

The present paper gives a contribution to a better understanding of the flow at the rim and in the wheel space of gas turbines. Steady state and time-accurate numerical simulations with a commercial Navier-Stokes solver for a 1.5 stage turbine similar to the model treated in the European Research Project ICAS-GT were conducted. In the framework of a numerical analysis, a validation with experimental results of the test rig at the Technical University of Aachen will be given. In preceding numerical investigations of realistic gas turbine rim cavities with a simplified treatment of the hot gas path (modelling of the main flow path without blades and vanes), so called Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices were found in the area of the gap when using appropriate boundary conditions. The present work shows that these flow instabilities also occur in a 1.5 stage gas turbine model with consideration of the blades and vanes. Therefore, several simulations with different sealing air mass flow rates (CW 7000, 20000, 30000) have been conducted. The results show, that for high sealing air mass flow rates Kelvin-Helmholtz Instabilities are developing. These vortices significantly coin the flow at the rim.

Preliminary Calculations on Post Combustion Carbon Capture From Gas Turbines With Flue Gas Recycle

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Akram ◽  
Bhupendra Khandelwal ◽  
Simon Blakey ◽  
Christopher W. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Flue Gas ◽  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Hot Water ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Air Inlet ◽  
Carbon Combustion ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The University

Carbon capture is getting increased attention recently due to the fact that it seems to be the only answer to decrease emissions. Gas turbines exhaust have 3–5 % concentration of CO2 which is very low to be captured by an amine carbon capture plant effectively. The amine based plants are most effective at around 10 – 15% CO2 in the flue gas. In order to increase the concentration of CO2 in the exhaust of the gas turbine, part of the exhaust gas needs to be recycled back to the air inlet. On reaching the concentration of CO2 around 10% it can be fed to the amine capture plant for effective carbon capture. A 100 kWe (plus 150 kW hot water) CHP gas turbine Turbec T100 is installed at the Low Carbon Combustion Centre of the University of Sheffield. The turbine set up will be modified to make it CO2 capture ready. The exhaust gases obtained will be piped to amine capture plant for testing capture efficiency. Preliminary calculations have been done and presented in this paper. The thermodynamic properties of CO2 are different from nitrogen and will have an effect on compressor, combustor and turbine performance. Preliminary calculations of recycle ratios and other performance based parameters have been presented in this paper. This paper also covers the aspects of turbine set up machinery which needs to be modified and what kind of modifications may be needed.

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