High Temperature, Low NOx Combustor Concept Development (Final Technical Report)

Technical Report · Sun Dec 29 04:00:00 EST 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1581090· OSTI ID:1581090

Sirignano, Matthew D. ^[1]; Goh, Edwin ^[2]; Hoffie, Andreas ^[2]; Nair, Vedanth ^[2]; Emerson, Benjamin ^[2]; Menon, Suresh ^[2]; Seitzman, Jerry ^[2]; Lieuwen, Timothy C. ^[2]

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1. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States); Georgia Institute of Technology
2. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)

This technical report describes the investigation of key research questions associated with axially staged combustion, a concept for reducing undesirable NOx emissions at high flame temperatures (>1900K). Enabling gas turbine operation at such high temperatures is essential in achieving further progress in combined cycle thermal efficiency, and NOx emissions remains a key obstacle. The investigation presented in this report utilized three avenues of investigation in tandem. The first investigative tool is a chemical reactor network model in a design optimization framework. This tool was used to assess the minimum theoretical NOx emissions achievable by axial staged configurations. In addition, the reactor network was used to assess the sensitivity of the NOx floor to real world parameters such as finite entrainment and mixing rates. The sensitivity analysis indicates that rapid entrainment of crossflow into the secondary combustion zone has the highest impact on NOx reduction in the axial staged configuration. The second avenue of investigation was the experimental characterization of NOx emissions from a reacting jet in a vitiation crossflow (RJICF). The RJICF is a natural choice for the implementation of axial staging and more detailed understanding of its emissions behavior is critical to its implementation. Jets spanning a wide range of parameters were tested and great efforts were made to isolate the coupled effects of parameters such as bulk averaged temperature rise as a result of the RJICF (ΔT), jet stoichiometry (φ_jet), and momentum flux ratio (J). The experimental results confirm that NOx emissions increase monotonically with ΔT, but also indicate that lifting of the flame significantly impacts NOx production. The third research methodology is large eddy simulation (LES) of reacting jets of various parameters. The results of the LES strongly support the importance of crossflow entrainment and flame lifting that was observed in the reactor modeling and experimental investigations.

• Research Organization: Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta, GA (United States); Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: FE0025344
• OSTI ID: 1581090
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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