Experimental Study of Combustion on a Micro Gas Turbine Combustor

A research program is in development in China as a demonstrator of combined cooling, heating and power system (CCHP). In this program, a micro gas turbine with net electrical output around 100kW is designed and developed. The combustor is designed for natural gas operation and oil fuel operation, respectively. In this paper, a prototype can combustor for the oil fuel was studied by the experiments. In this paper, the combustor was tested using the ambient pressure combustor test facility. The sensors were equipped to measure the combustion performance; the exhaust gas was sampled and analyzed by a gas analyzer device. From the tests and experiments, combustion efficiency, pattern factor at the exit, the surface temperature profile of the outer liner wall, the total pressure loss factor of the combustion chamber with and without burning, and the pollutants emission fraction at the combustor exit were obtained. It is also found that with increasing of the inlet temperature, the combustion efficiency and the total pressure loss factor increased, while the exit pattern factor coefficient reduced. The emissions of CO and unburned hydrogen carbon (UHC) significantly reduced, but the emission of NOx significantly increased.

Ignition Characteristics of a Fischer-Tropsch Synthetic Jet Fuel

Ignition delay times of a “real” synthetic jet fuel (S8) were measured using an atmospheric pressure flow reactor facility. Experiments were performed between 900 K and 1200 K at equivalence ratios from 0.5 to 1.5. Ignition delay time measurements were also performed with JP8 fuel for comparison. Liquid fuel was prevaporized to gaseous form in a preheated nitrogen environment before mixing with air in the premixing section, located at the entrance to the test section of the flow reactor. The experimental data show shorter ignition delay times for S8 fuel than for JP8 due to the absence of aromatic components in S8 fuel. However, the ignition delay time measurements indicate higher overall activation energy for S8 fuel than for JP8. A detailed surrogate kinetic model for S8 was developed by validating against the ignition delay times obtained in the present work. The chemical composition of S8 used in the experiments consisted of 99.7 vol% paraffins of which approximately 80 vol% was iso-paraffins and 20% n-paraffins. The detailed kinetic mechanism developed in the current work included n-decane and iso-octane as the surrogate components to model ignition characteristics of synthetic jet fuels. The detailed surrogate kinetic model has approximately 700 species and 2000 reactions. This kinetic mechanism represents a five-component surrogate mixture to model generic kerosene-type jets fuels, namely, n-decane (for n-paraffins), iso-octane (for iso-paraffins), n-propylcyclohexane (for naphthenes), n-propylbenzene (for aromatics) and decene (for olefins). The sensitivity of iso-paraffins on jet fuel ignition delay times was investigated using the detailed kinetic model. The amount of iso-paraffins present in the jet fuel has little effect on the ignition delay times in the high temperature oxidation regime. However, the presence of iso-paraffins in synthetic jet fuels can increase the ignition delay times by two orders of magnitude in the negative temperature (NTC) region between 700 K and 900 K, typical gas turbine conditions. This feature can have a favorable impact on preventing flashback caused by the premature autoignition of liquid fuels in lean premixed prevaporized (LPP) combustion systems.

Chemical Kinetic Analysis of a Flameless Gas Turbine Combustor

Flameless combustion (FC) is one of the most promising techniques of reducing harmful emissions from combustion systems. FC is a combustion phenomenon that takes place at low O2 concentration and high inlet reactant temperature. This unique combination results in a distributed combustion regime with a lower adiabatic flame temperature. The paper focuses on investigating the chemical kinetics of an prototype combustion chamber built at the university of Cincinnati with an aim of establishing flameless regime and demonstrating the applicability of FC to gas turbine engines. A Chemical reactor model (CRM) has been built for emulating the reactions within the combustor. The entire combustion chamber has been divided into appropriate number of Perfectly Stirred Reactors (PSRs) and Plug Flow Reactors (PFRs). The interconnections between these reactors and the residence times of these reactors are based on the PIV studies of the combustor flow field. The CRM model has then been used to predict the combustor emission profile for various equivalence ratios. The results obtained from CRM model show that the emission from the combustor are quite less at low equivalence ratios and have been found to be in reasonable agreement with experimental observations. The chemical kinetic analysis gives an insight on the role of vitiated combustion gases in suppressing the formation of pollutants within the combustion process.

Towards Improved Prediction of Aero-Engine Combustor Performance Using Large Eddy Simulations

The paper presents an assessment of large eddy simulation (LES) and conventional Reynolds averaged methods (RANS) for predicting aero-engine gas turbine combustor performance. The performance characteristic that is examined in detail is the radial burner outlet temperature (BOT) or fuel-air ratio profile. Several different combustor configurations, with variations in airflows, geometries, hole patterns and operating conditions are analyzed with both LES and RANS methods. It is seen that LES consistently produces a better match to radial profile as compared to RANS. To assess the predictive capability of LES as a design tool, pretest predictions of radial profile for a combustor configuration are also presented. Overall, the work presented indicates that LES is a more accurate tool and can be used with confidence to guide combustor design. This work is the first systematic assessment of LES versus RANS on industry-relevant aero-engine gas turbine combustors.

Review and Analysis of Bluff Body Flame Stabilization Data

This paper compiles and analyzes bluff body stabilized flame blowoff data from the literature. Many of these studies contain semi-empirical blowoff correlations that are, in essence, Damko¨hler number correlations of their data. This paper re-analyzes these data, utilizing various Damko¨hler number correlations based upon detailed kinetic modeling for determining chemical time scales. While the results from this compilation are similar to that deduced from many earlier studies, it demonstrates that a rather comprehensive data set taken over a large range of conditions can be correlated from “first-principles” based calculations that do not rely on empirical fits or adjustable constants (e.g., global activation energy or pressure exponents). The paper then discusses the implications of these results on understanding of blowoff. Near blowoff flames experience local extinction of the flame sheet, manifested as “holes” that form and convect downstream. However, local extinction is distinct from blowoff — in fact, under certain conditions the flame can apparently persist indefinitely with certain levels of local extinction. We hypothesize that simple Damko¨hler number correlations contain the essential physics describing this first stage of blowoff; i.e., they are correlations for the conditions where local extinction on the flame begins, but do not fundamentally describe the ultimate blowoff condition itself. However, such correlations are reasonably successful in correlating blowoff limits because the ultimate blowoff event appears to be correlated to some extent to the onset of this first stage.

Fuel Interchangeability for Lean Premixed Combustion in Gas Turbine Engines

In response to environmental concerns of NOx emissions, gas turbine manufacturers have developed engines that operate under lean, pre-mixed fuel and air conditions. While this has proven to reduce NOx emissions by lowering peak flame temperatures, it is not without its limitations as engines utilizing this technology are more susceptible to combustion dynamics. Although dependent on a number of mechanisms, changes in fuel composition can alter the dynamic response of a given combustion system. This is of particular interest as increases in demand of domestic natural gas have fueled efforts to utilize alternatives such as coal derived syngas, imported liquefied natural gas and hydrogen or hydrogen augmented fuels. However, prior to changing the fuel supply end-users need to understand how their system will respond. A variety of historical parameters have been utilized to determine fuel interchangeability such as Wobbe and Weaver Indices, however these parameters were never optimized for today’s engines operating under lean pre-mixed combustion. This paper provides a discussion of currently available parameters to describe fuel interchangeability. Through the analysis of the dynamic response of a lab-scale Rijke tube combustor operating on various fuel blends, it is shown that commonly used indices are inadequate for describing combustion specific phenomena.

Noise Generated by a Lifted Flame in a Vitiated Co-Flow

The acoustic field generated by a lifted flame is studied by a hybrid approach. First, Large Eddy Simulations (LES) are used to compute the flow and the acoustic sources. Next, an inhomogeneous wave equation is solved to obtain the resulting acoustic field. The flow computations show good agreement with experimental data. The dominant acoustic sources are found to be located in the ignition region and at the tip of the flame. The acoustic computations revealed the presence of low-frequency waves radiated in the far-field. The shape of the most energetic acoustic modes are identified by POD analysis to be axial modes.

A Novel Strategy for Passive Control of Combustion Instabilities Through Modification of Flame Dynamics

Passive control of combustion instabilities is explored in the case of systems featuring a collection of premixed flames. The method devised in this research differs from the general strategies employed to passively hinder the growth of acoustic-combustion oscillations by augmenting acoustic damping. Dissipation of acoustic energy is usually obtained by connecting Helmholtz resonators or quarter wave type cavities or by placing perforated plate linings around the system. While these systems effectively reduce pressure oscillations, optimum performance is not always obtained over the full range of operating conditions and their implementation requires substantial space which is not often available in practice. Conceptually, these standard techniques deal with the consequences of combustion instabilities but not with the driving sources. It is shown here that an alternative solution may be to directly act on the causes of the onset of thermo-acoustic coupling. The basic idea is to modify the flames dynamics using the dynamical response of the injection system. The principle of the passive control strategy proposed on this basis is to counteract the onset of oscillations by tackling the underlying causes. The injection system is modified to avoid a coherent motion of the flames when they are submitted to an acoustic modulation and reduce the coupling between acoustic perturbations and heat release fluctuations. Numerical simulations and experimental data are presented and one may infer that the method could bring a substantial improvement to the system stability. The efficiency of this technique is demonstrated in the case of small premixed flames anchored on a multipoint injection system (the configuration is that of a premixed gaseous-fueled multipoint dump combustor), but the principle is more general and can be extended to larger scale turbulent combustors featuring a collection of flames.

Analysis of NOx Formation in a Hydrogen Fueled Gas Turbine Engine

A commercially available natural gas fueled gas turbine engine was operated on hydrogen. Three sets of fuel injectors were developed to facilitate stable operation while generating differing levels of fuel/air premixing. One set was designed to produce near uniform mixing while the others have differing degrees of non-uniformity. The emissions performance of the engine over its full range of loads is characterized for each of the injector sets. In addition, the performance is also assessed for the set with near uniform mixing as operated on natural gas. The results show that improved mixing and lower equivalence ratio decreases NO emission levels as expected. However, even with nearly perfect premixing, it is found that the engine, when operated on hydrogen, produces a higher amount of NO than when operated with natural gas. Much of this attributed to the higher equivalence ratios that the engine operates on when firing hydrogen. However, even at the lowest equivalence ratios run at low power conditions, higher NO was observed. Analysis of the potential NO formation effects of residence time, kinetic pathways of NO production via NNH, and the kinetics of the dilute combustion strategy used are evaluated. While no one mechanism appears to explain the reasons for the higher NO, it is concluded that each may be contributing to the higher NO emissions observed with hydrogen. In the present configuration with the commercial control system operating normally, it is evident that system level effects are also contributing to the observed NO emission differences between hydrogen and natural gas.

Modeling of Turbulent Combustion and Radiative Heat Transfer in a Object-Oriented CFD Code for Gas Turbine Application

One of the driving requirements in gas turbine design is the combustion analysis. The reduction of exhaust pollutant emissions is in fact the main design constraint of modern gas turbine engines, requiring a detailed investigation of flame stabilization criteria and temperature distribution within combustion chamber. At the same time, the prediction of thermal loads on liner walls continues to represent a critical issue especially with diffusion flame combustors which are still widely used in aeroengines. To meet such requirement, design techniques have to take advantage also of the most recent CFD tools that have to supply advanced combustion models according to the specific application demand. Even if LES approach represents a very accurate approach for the analysis of reactive flows, RANS computation still represents a fundamental tool in industrial gas turbine development, thanks to its optimal tradeoff between accuracy and computational costs. This paper describes the development and the validation of both combustion and radiation models in a object-oriented RANS CFD code: several turbulent combustion models were considered, all based on a generalized presumed PDF flamelet approach, valid for premixed and non premixed flames. Concerning radiative heat transfer calculations, two directional models based on the P1-Approximation and the Finite Volume Method were treated. Accuracy and reliability of developed models have been proved by performing several computations on well known literature test-cases. Selected cases investigate several turbulent flame types and regimes allowing to prove code affordability in a wide range of possible gas turbine operating conditions.