Aiguo Liu

The use of biogas in land-based gas turbines for power generation is a promising approach to reducing greenhouse gases and our dependence on fossil fuels. The focus of this research was to investigate the fuel/air mixing and combustion performance in an DLE (dry low emission) type can combustor designed for a micro-gas turbine. The fuel and air mixing uniformity was studied considering the air flow characteristic and fuel injection performance through the numerical simulation. The influence of the fuel/air mixing characteristics on the combustion characteristics was studied by numerical simulation and experimental tests. The combustion characteristics studied included the temperature field in the combustor, the pattern factor at the combustor outlet, combustion efficiency, and pollutant emission characteristics. The results show the position of the fuel nozzle has little effect on the mixing uniformity due to the limited mixing space for the micro-gas turbine combustor, while there are optimal fuel nozzle diameters to generate the suitable fuel jet momentum for the mixing process. The fuel/air mixing characteristics had an obvious influence on the combustion performance for the studied DLE combustor. The increase in the fuel air mixing uniformity can decrease the NOx emissions and generate a better temperature distribution at the combustor outlet. The increased mixing uniformity may decrease the combustion efficiency and increase the CO emissions of the micro-gas turbine combustor.

Experimental studies have been performed to investigate the effects of hydrogen addition on the combustion characteristics of Chinese No.3 jet fuel (RP-3 kerosene/air premixed flames. Experiments were carried out in a constant volume chamber and the influences of the initial temperatures of 390 and 420 K, initial pressures of 0.1 and 0.3 MPa, equivalence ratios of 0.6–1.6 and hydrogen additions of 0.0–0.5 on the laminar burning velocities, and Markstein numbers of Hydrogen (H₂)/RP-3/air mixtures were investigated. The results show that the flame front surfaces of RP-3/air mixtures remain smooth throughout the entire flame propagation process at a temperature of 390 K, pressure of 0.3 MPa, equivalence ratio of 1.3 and without hydrogen addition, but when the hydrogen addition increases from 0.0 to 0.5 under the same conditions, flaws and protuberances occur at the flame surfaces. It was also found that with the increase of the equivalence ratio from 0.9 to 1.5, the laminar burning velocities of the mixtures increase at first and then decrease, and the highest laminar burning velocity was measured at an equivalence ratio of 1.2. Meanwhile, with the increase of hydrogen addition, laminar burning velocities of H₂/RP-3/air mixtures increase. However, the Markstein numbers of H₂/RP-3/air mixtures decrease with the increase of hydrogen addition, which means that the flames of H₂/RP-3/air mixtures become unstable with the increase of hydrogen addition.