Experimental Evaluation of Fuel Injection Configurations for a Lean-Premixed Low NOx Gas Turbine Combustor

Abstract

The design and testing of three natural gas fuel injector configurations for a low emissions gas turbine combustor are described. The injectors provided varying degrees of fuel/air premixing and permitted an assessment of the degree of premixing necessary to achieve NOx emissions below the program goal of 10 ppm. The work described represents a preliminary step in an effort to develop production-level gas turbine combustor hardware with ultra-low NOx capabilities.

Performance Testing of a Low Emissions, Natural-Gas Fired, Small Gas Turbine Combustor

“…The combustor development effort extended earlier work that had established a baseline of design and performance information for lean-premixed, natural gas combustion (Smith, 1987;Smith, 1986, andSood, andShekleton, 1980). These earlier studies had documented the ability to achieve ultra-low NOx emissions with lean-premixed combustion when firing natural gas in a test rig environment.…”

Dynamics and stability of lean-premixed swirl-stabilized combustion

“…Both axial and radial swirler configurations in a can combustor were evaluated by Smith et al [35] using natural gas and by Cowell and Smith [36] using liquid fuel. There appeared to be no fundamental hurdle to achieving ultra-low-emissions with each swirler configuration.…”

Development of a Dual-Fuel Injection System for Lean Premixed Industrial Gas Turbines

“…The gas-only injector is illustrated in Hg. I. Opaation and design of this combustion system has been described in previous publications including Smith, 1987, Etheridge, 1992and Rawlins, 1995 The major elements of the gas-only injector are an annular premixing passage with an axial twirler and gas fuel delivery through a series of radial fuel tubes. The injectors impart a high level of swirl to the fuel-air mixture to stabilize the flame front within the combustor.…”

“…Solar Turbines has been developing lean-premixed combustion technologies since the mid-1980's for both gas and liquid fuels . (Roberts et al, 1981, Smith et al, 1986, Smith et al, 1987, Smith and Cowell, 1989, Cowell and Smith, 1992). For natural gas operation Solar has had the Centaur (3-4 MW), Taurus (5-7 MW) and Mars (9-11 MW) family of engines in production since 1993.…”