Effect of novel alternative fuels and compositions on vibrations of a gas turbine engine

Abstract

Stricter emissions legislation has driven the aviation industry to explore alternative fuels that can efficiently replace or blend with current Jet fuels. With this change it has become vital to investigate the effects of these fuels on combustion instabilities. In this study a recommissioned small gas turbine (Honeywell GTCP85 APU engine) has been used to test various blends of Jet A-1 and UOP along with four other novel fuels. A detailed analysis of vibrational response of these fuels upon combustion has been presented in this study. The study was conducted at the University of Sheffield's Low Carbon Combustion. The focus of this study is to investigate the vibrational response of different fuels and their compositions with varied aromatic content.

The effect of alternative fuels on gaseous and particulate matter (PM) emission performance in an auxiliary power unit (APU)

“…Researchers have done various studies on the use of alternative fuels in gas turbines, both for military and commercial aviation (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26) . It has also been observed in various studies that there is an advantage in using alternative blends for gas turbines as the use of paraffinic alternative fuels aids in reducing the net carbon footprint, particulate and smoke emissions (27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32) . This can also contribute to improving the local air quality (14,15,(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25) .…”

“…Lobo et al (28) studied the effect of fuels derived from alternative sources on non-volatile particulate matter (PM) emissions. In recent years, studies have presented results on vibrational and noise production while using alternative fuels (29,30,33) .…”

“…There are various studies in the literature regarding the overall environmental impact, global warming potential and the use of alternative fuels in gas turbines (26,(28)(29)(30)(31)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47) . Recent studies by Christie et al (47) and Brem et al (26) show the impact of hydrogen content in the fuel on PM emissions.…”

Experimental Investigation and Assessment of Combustion Instability and Engine Vibrations; as an Impact of Using Novel Alternative Fuels with Low Aromatics in a Gas Turbine Engine

“…• Environmental Control system start (ECS) which equates to approximately 50 % engine power. This condition would be used in operation circumstances Figure 1 Noise emitted by combustors with no active control and with active control (Candel,1992) Figure 2 PSD comparison between several fuels under one condition (Khandelwal, Roy and Lord, 2014) while the aircraft is on the ground and cabin electrics and air-conditioning is activated. • Main Engine Start (MES) the final setting which equates to the engines full power rating, used in operational situations to provide bleed air to start up the main engines of the aircraft.…”

“…As it stands the lion's share of research being done on the performance of alternative fuels pertains to the fuels emissions when burnt in gas turbines (Kugele, Jelinek and Gaffal, 2005;Khandelwal, Wijesinghe and Sriraman, 2018;Zheng et al, 2018). And therefore, very little research is being done on the vibrations and noise characteristics of the engine when it is running on alternative fuels the current research that has been done is not remains non-comprehensive (Khandelwal, Roy and Lord, 2014;Wijesinghe and Khandelwal, 2019).…”