Development of Criteria for Flashback Propensity in Jet Flames for High Hydrogen Content and Natural Gas Type Fuels
- Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
Due to increasingly stringent air quality requirements stationary power gas turbines have moved to lean-premixed operation, which reduces pollutant emissions but can result in flashback. Curtailing flashback can be difficult with hydrocarbon fuels and becomes even more challenging when hydrogen is used as the fuel. In fact, flashback is a key operability issue associated with low emission combustion of high hydrogen content fuels. Flashback can cause serious damage to the premixer hardware. Hence, design tools to predict flashback propensity are of interest. Such a design tool has been developed based on the data gathered by experimental study to predict boundary layer flashback using non-dimensional parameters. The flashback propensity of a premixed jet flame has been studied experimentally. Boundary layer flashback has been investigated under turbulent flow conditions at elevated pressures and temperatures (i.e. 3 atm to 8 atm and 300 K to 500 K). The data presented in this study are for hydrogen fuel at various Reynolds numbers, which are representative of practical gas turbine premixer conditions and are significantly higher than results currently available in the literature. Three burner heads constructed of different materials (stainless steel, copper, and zirconia ceramic) were used to evaluate the effect of tip temperature, a parameter found previously to be an important factor in triggering flashback. This study characterizes flashback systematically by developing a comprehensive non-dimensional model which takes into account all effective parameters in boundary layer flashback propensity. The model was optimized for new data and captures the behavior of the new results well. Further, comparison of the model with the single existing study of high pressure jet flame flashback also indicates good agreement. The model developed using the high pressure test rig is able to predict flashback tendencies for a commercial gas turbine engine and can thus serve as a design tool for identifying when flashback is likely to occur for a given geometry and condition.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FE0011948
- OSTI ID:
- 1357931
- Report Number(s):
- Final Report
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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