Summary In recent years, new ways of improving the combustion efficiency of fuel during gas turbine operations have been developed. The most significant has been the application of plasma technology for the combustion of fuel in gas turbine operations. Plasma is formed when gas is exposed to either high temperature or high‐voltage electricity. This technology is very promising and has proven to enhance the performance of gas turbines and reduce toxic emissions. Recent studies have shown the use of different types of plasma applications in gas turbine operations such as plasma torch, filamentary discharge, and nanosecond pulse discharge, whose results show that plasma technology has great potential in improving flame stabilization, the fuel/air mixing ratio, and flash point values of these fuels. These findings and advances have further provided new opportunities in the development of efficient plasma discharges for practical uses in plasma combustion of fuel for gas turbine operations. This article is a comprehensive overview of the advances and blind spots in the knowledge of plasma combustion of fuel during internal combustion engine operations. This review also focuses on applications, methods, and experimental results in plasma combustion of fuel in gas turbines.

The adoption of biorenewable alternative fuel resources from biofuels (ethanol or biodiesel) has produced promising solutions to reduce some toxic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from gas turbine engines (GTEs). Despite the reduced hydrocarbon associated with adopting alternative bio-renewable fuel resources, GTE operations still emit toxic gases due to inefficient engine performance. In this study, we assess the impact of the integration of plasma combustion technology on a micro-GTE using biodiesel fuel from animal fat with the aim of addressing performance, fuel consumption, and GHG emission reduction limitations. Laboratory design, fabrication, assembly, testing, and results evaluation were conducted at Kuwait’s Public Authority for Applied Education and Training. The result indicates the lowest toxic emissions of sulfur, nitrogen oxide (NO), NO2, and CO were from the biodiesel blended fuels. The improved thermal efficiency of GTE biodiesel due to the volume of hydrogen plasma injected improves the engine’s overall combustion efficiency. Hence, this increases the compressor inlet and outlet firing temperature by 13.3 °C and 6.1 °C, respectively. The Plasma technology produced a thrust increment of 0.2 kgf for the highest loading condition, which significantly impacted horsepower and GTE engine efficiency and reduced the cost of fuel consumption.

Biodiesel is one of the more recent green fuel products in the world. It can be produced from several raw materials such as straight vegetable oils, animal fats, tallow, and waste cooking oils, and blended with diesel. Properties of biodiesel are different compared to fossil diesel in terms of production methods and emission levels released after combustion in an internal combustion engine. Kuwait consumes a huge amount of energy which is almost 8% to meet the increasing demand for electricity and water. Moreover, the use of electricity in the production of biodiesel increases energy use and cost of production. Kuwait is receiving an amount of solar irradiation ranging from 2050 kWh/m2 to 2100 kWh/m2. The present study is concerned with the evaluation of the potential to use solar energy to produce biodiesel from sheep fat waste as a raw material. An experimental test rig was set up for a single cylinder diesel engine in the laboratory, where a solar power system was used to assist the production process of biodiesel from tallow waste. The biodiesel is then blended with diesel at different volume percentages, such as graded as B20, B50, B75 and B100, respectively. The exhaust gases such as oxygen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitric oxide and nitric dioxide where also analyzed. An optimum decrease in values of nitric oxide levels was observed at the load of 51%, 68%, 85% and 93% during the operation at blend of biodiesel B20, B50, B75 and B100, respectively. Nitric dioxide was decreased at the load of 51%, 68% and 85% during the operation using B20, B50 and B75, respectively. Optimum SFC was achieved at B20, B50 and B75 during high loads of 85% and 93%. It can be concluded that sheep tallow biodiesel shows a promising result in terms of fuel consumption and environmental emissions of greenhouse gases.

Jet engines are commonly used in aeronautical applications, and are one of the types of gas turbine engines. The circulation of air releases heat energy to expand the volume of hot fluids and impact the turbine wheel to generate power of hot gases. The present study investigates the potential of using ultrasonic atomization technology to assist in the combustion process. An experimental rig was set up to determine the performance of jet engines using ultrasonic droplets. A gas analyzer was used to measure various greenhouse emissions of exhaust gas. The performance of the engine was tested under three load levels (high, medium, low), starting from 10 psi at a steady state, to the minimum value. A significant result was tested for a low value of nitrogen monoxide at the three levels of load, and a specific result was tested for an efficiency value of 2% at the three levels of load. Carbon dioxide was found to decrease at the low load level. The use of an ultrasonic atomization device to assist in the combustion process was useful in achieving engine efficiency of 1% and a reduction of 25% in carbon dioxide exhaust gas.

Many applications depend mainly on heat energy, such as solar and geothermal heat pumps. ‎There is a high increase in the use of applications that depend on renewable energy. The ‎main objective of this project is to study the heating systems and geothermal heat pumps. ‎This study also investigated solar heat pumps and the geothermal efficiency to optimize its ‎strategic plan. A performance factor (COP) was used to assess the efficiency of both ‎geothermal and solar systems. To apply the methodology, a case study was used. The ‎results in the thermal energy system are that solar energy is better and more cost-effective in ‎terms of capital. The revenues for the solar system after 25 years were higher than the ‎revenues for the geothermal system. Furthermore, solar power has a shorter payback time ‎making it superior for a similar life span, so it was clear that the expenditure on solar power ‎was safer than the expenditure on geothermal power.‎‎