Combustion Efficiency of a Premixed Continuous Flow Combustor

1985 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 695-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. S. Anand ◽  
F. C. Gouldin

Experimental data in the form of radial profiles of mean temperature, gas composition and velocity at the combustor exit and combustion efficiency are reported and discussed for a swirling flow, continuous combustor. The combustor is composed of two confined, concentric independently swirling jets: an outer, annular air jet and a central premixed fuel-air jet, the fuel being propane or methane. Combustion is stabilized by a swirl-generated central recirculation zone. The primary objective of this research is to determine the effect of fuel substitution and of changes in outer flow swirl conditions on combustor performance. Results are very similar for both methane and propane. Changes in outer flow swirl cause significant changes in exit profiles, but, surprisingly, combustion efficiency is relatively unchanged. A combustion mechanism is proposed which qualitatively explains the results and identifies important flow characteristics and physical processes determining combustion efficiency. It is hypothesized that combustion occurs in a thin sheet, similar in structure to a premixed turbulent flame, anchored on the combustor centerline just upstream of the recirculation zone and swept downstream with the flow. Combustion efficiency depends on the extent of the radial propagation, across mean flow streamtubes, of this reaction sheet. It is concluded that, in general, this propagation and hence efficiency are extremely sensitive to flow conditions.

Author(s):  
K.M. Moiseeva ◽  
◽  
A.Yu. Krainov ◽  
E.I. Rozhkova ◽  
◽  
...  

Swirling combustion is currently one of the most important engineering problems in physics of combustion. There is a hypothesis on the increase in the combustion efficiency of reacting gas mixtures in combustion chambers with swirling flows, as well as on the increase in the efficiency of fuel combustion devices. In this paper, it is proposed to simulate a swirling flow by taking into account the angular component of the flow velocity. The aim of the study is to determine the effect of the angular component of the flow velocity on the characteristics of the flow and combustion of an air suspension of coal dust in a pipe. The problem is solved in a twodimensional axisymmetric approximation with allowance for a swirling flow. A physical and mathematical model is based on the approaches of the mechanics of multiphase reacting media. A solution method involves the arbitrary discontinuity decay algorithm. The impact of the flow swirl and the size of coal dust particles on the gas temperature distribution along the pipe is determined.


Author(s):  
Ajit Patki ◽  
Xianchang Li ◽  
Daniel Chen ◽  
Helen Lou ◽  
Vijaya Damodara

Soot emissions (PM 2.5) as well as CO and NOx from industrial flares and other industrial processes or sources pose a substantial risk to human being health and the environment, and now are subject to new and tougher EPA regulations. Flaring is used widely used in many industries to dispose unwanted combustion gases by burning them as a flame. However, flaring produces significant amount of particulate matter in the form of soot, along with other harmful gas emissions. Although many experimental and numerical studies have previously been done on flames burning in a controlled condition, relatively few studies have been conducted with fuel-steam mixture. In practice, air and steam are commonly used to assist the flaring processes — control the smoke and the combustion efficiency. This study aims to investigate soot, CO and NOx emissions of turbulent diffusion methane and propane flame mixed with air or superheated steam. To study such effect numerically, the computational fluid dynamics software ANSYS Fluent 14.5 is used with non-premixed probability density function (PDF) model. The laminar flamelet is generated with automated grid refinement. For the soot generation, the Moss-Brookes soot model with Lee sub-model is considered. The combustion mechanism is developed by the authors’ research group from the combined GRI and USC mechanisms. Two types of fuel, methane and propane, are used. The amount of super-heated steam varied from four percent to twenty percent (4%, 8 %, 12%, 16%, and 20%), and the behavior of the flame is analyzed. For the baseline case, the jet has a diameter of 50.8 mm or 2 inches, and the jet velocity is kept to 1.0 m/s. A co-flow air is supplied at a velocity of 0.2 m/s. The temperature distribution of methane and propane are compared with different contents of steam or air assists. The NOx, Soot and CO yields (kg/kg) varying with steam or air percentages are also presented. The results indicate that the soot yield is dependent on fuel type strongly and the percentage of steam or air affects the soot yield differently as the fuel type varies.


1993 ◽  
Vol 246 ◽  
pp. 225-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. R. Panchapakesan ◽  
J. L. Lumley

A turbulent round jet of helium was studied experimentally using a composite probe consisting of an interference probe of the Way–Libby type and an × -probe. Simultaneous measurements of two velocity components and helium mass fraction concentration were made in the x/d range 50–120. These measurements are compared with measurements in an air jet of the same momentum flux reported in Part 1. The jet discharge Froude number was 14000 and the measurement range was in the intermediate region between the non-buoyant jet region and the plume region. The measurements are consistent with earlier studies on helium jets. The mass flux of helium across the jet is within ±10% of the nozzle input. The mean velocity field along the axis of the jet is consistent with the scaling expressed by the effective diameter but the mean concentration decay constant exhibits a density-ratio dependence. The radial profiles of mean velocity and mean concentration agree with earlier measurements, with the half-widths indicating a turbulent Schmidt number of 0.7. Significantly higher intensities of axial velocity fluctuations are observed in comparison with the air jet, while the intensities of radial and azimuthal velocity fluctuations are virtually identical with the air jet when scaled with the half-widths. Approximate budgets for the turbulent kinetic energy, scalar variance and scalar fluxes are presented. The ratio of mechanical to scalar timescales is found to be close to 1.5 across most of the jet. Current models for triple moments involving scalar fluctuations are compared with measurements. As was observed with the velocity triple moments in Part 1, the performance of the Full model that includes all terms except advection was found to be very good in the fully turbulent region of the jet.


Author(s):  
Michael J. Denton ◽  
Samir B. Tambe ◽  
San-Mou Jeng

The altitude relight of a gas turbine combustor is an FAA and EASA regulation which dictates the successful re-ignition of an engine and its proper spool-up after an in-flight shutdown. Combustor pressure loss, ambient pressure, ambient temperature, and equivalence ratio were all studied on a full-scale, 3-cup, single-annular aviation combustor sector to create an ignition map. The flame development process was studied through the implementation of high-speed video. Testing was conducted by placing the sector horizontally upstream of an air jet ejector in a high altitude relight testing facility. Air was maintained at room temperature for varying pressure, and then the cryogenic heat exchanger was fed with liquid nitrogen to chill the air down to a limit of −50 deg F, corresponding with an altitude of 30,000 feet. Fuel was injected at constant equivalence ratios across multiple operating conditions, giving insight into the ignition map of the combustor sector. Results of testing indicated difficulty in achieving ignition at high altitudes for pressure drops greater than 2%, while low pressure drops show adequate performance. Introducing low temperatures to simulate the ambient conditions yielded a worse outcome, with all conditions having poor results except for 1%. High-speed video of the flame development process during the relight conditions across all altitudes yielded a substantial effect of the pressure drop on ignitability of the combustor. An increase in pressure drop was associated with a decrease in the likelihood of ignition success, especially at increasing altitudes. The introduction of the reduced temperature effect exacerbated this effect, further hurting ignition. High velocity regions in the combustor were detrimental to the ignition, and high area, low velocity regions aided greatly. The flame tended to settle into the corner recirculation zone and recirculate back into the center-toroidal recirculation zone (CTRZ), spreading downstream and likewise into adjacent swirl cups. These tests demonstrate the need for new combustor designs to consider adding large recirculation zones for combustor flame stability that will aid in relight requirements.


2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Wang ◽  
Mauro Carnevale ◽  
Luca di Mare

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been widely adopted in the compressor design process, but it remains a challenge to predict the flow details, performance, and stage matching for multistage, high-speed machines accurately. The Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulation with mixing plane for bladerow coupling is still the workhorse in the industry and the unsteady bladerow interaction is discarded. This paper examines these discarded unsteady effects via deterministic fluxes using semi-analytical and unsteady RANS (URANS) calculations. The study starts from a planar duct under periodic perturbations. The study shows that under large perturbations, the mixing plane produces dubious values of flow quantities (e.g., whirl angle). The performance of the mixing plane can be considerably improved by including deterministic fluxes into the mixing plane formulation. This demonstrates the effect of deterministic fluxes at the bladerow interface. Furthermore, the front stages of a 19-blade row compressor are investigated and URANS solutions are compared with RANS mixing plane solutions. The magnitudes of divergence of Reynolds stresses (RS) and deterministic stresses (DS) are compared. The effect of deterministic fluxes is demonstrated on whirl angle and radial profiles of total pressure and so on. The enhanced spanwise mixing due to deterministic fluxes is also observed. The effect of deterministic fluxes is confirmed via the nonlinear harmonic (NLH) method which includes the deterministic fluxes in the mean flow, and the study of multistage compressor shows that unsteady effects, which are quantified by deterministic fluxes, are indispensable to have credible predictions of the flow details and performance of compressor even at its design stage.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 3224
Author(s):  
Ziwan Li ◽  
Yixiang Yuan ◽  
Baoting Guo ◽  
V. L. Varsegov ◽  
Jun Yao

Transverse jets in crossflow are widely used in energy systems, especially as dilution air jets, fuel/air mixers, and combustion equipment, and have received extensive attention and plenty of research. However, the studies of the circular transverse jet issued from a circular gap at the circumferential direction of a tube in crossflow are very limited. This paper studies a relatively new jet: the circular transverse jet. Firstly, numerical calculations are conducted under different turbulence models but with the same boundary conditions. By comparing the numerical results of different turbulence models with the existing experimental data, the turbulence model which is most suitable for the numerical calculation of the circular transverse jet is selected. Then, this turbulence model is used to calculate and analyze the flow field structure and its characteristics. It is found that due to the aerodynamic barrier effect of the high-velocity jet, a negative pressure zone is formed behind the jet trajectory; the existence of the negative pressure zone causes the formation of a vortex structure and a recirculation zone downstream the circular transverse jet; and the length/width ratio of the recirculation zone does not change with the changes of the crossflow and the jet parameters. It means that the recirculation zone is a fixed shape for a definite device. This would be fundamental references for the studying of fuel/air mixing characteristics and combustion efficiency when the circular transverse jet is used as a fuel/air mixer and stable combustion system.


Author(s):  
Thomas Ludwig Kaiser ◽  
Lutz Lesshafft ◽  
Kilian Oberleithner

Abstract Resolvent analysis is applied to a nonreacting and a reacting swirled jet flow. Time-averaged flows as input for the resolvent analysis and validation for the results of the resolvent analysis are obtained by experiments. We show that in the nonreacting (cold) flow case, the resolvent analysis is capable of predicting the hydrodynamic response to upstream harmonic acoustic forcing if the flow shows low-rank behavior. This is the case for low and moderate acoustic forcing amplitudes. Even for very strong acoustic velocity amplitudes that are of the same order of magnitude as the flow velocity, the resolvent analysis still provides reasonable results. The method also yields very good results for the reacting flow in terms of velocity fluctuation and heat release response to the acoustic forcing. This confirms the idea that the resolvent method could be applied to estimate the flame transfer function (FTF) based on the mean flow and flame.


Fluids ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Nathaniel S. Kelly ◽  
Harinderjit S. Gill ◽  
Andrew N. Cookson ◽  
Katharine H. Fraser

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death globally and there is an unmet need for effective, safer blood-contacting devices, including valves, stents and artificial hearts. In these, recirculation regions promote thrombosis, triggering mechanical failure, neurological dysfunction and infarctions. Transitional flow over a backward facing step is an idealised model of these flow conditions; the aim was to understand the impact of non-Newtonian blood rheology on modelling this flow. Flow simulations of shear-thinning and Newtonian fluids were compared for Reynolds numbers ( R e ) covering the comprehensive range of laminar, transitional and turbulent flow for the first time. Both unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes ( k − ω SST) and Smagorinsky Large Eddy Simulations (LES) were assessed; only LES correctly predicted trends in the recirculation zone length for all R e . Turbulent-transition was assessed by several criteria, revealing a complex picture. Instantaneous turbulent parameters, such as velocity, indicated delayed transition: R e = 1600 versus R e = 2000, for Newtonian and shear-thinning transitions, respectively. Conversely, when using a Re defined on spatially averaged viscosity, the shear-thinning model transitioned below the Newtonian. However, recirculation zone length, a mean flow parameter, did not indicate any difference in the transitional Re between the two. This work shows a shear-thinning rheology can explain the delayed transition for whole blood seen in published experimental data, but this delay is not the full story. The results show that, to accurately model transitional blood flow, and so enable the design of advanced cardiovascular devices, it is essential to incorporate the shear-thinning rheology, and to explicitly model the turbulent eddies.


1967 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sedat Sami ◽  
Thomas Carmody ◽  
Hunter Rouse

In the flow-establishment region of an air jet issuing with an efflux velocity of about 35 ft./sec from a 1.0 ft. diameter nozzle into still air, measurements were made of mean axial and radial velocities, mean static pressure, turbulence intensities, turbulent shear, and pressure fluctuation. For the measurement of the latter a pressure probe using a ceramic piezo-electric tube was developed. Also included in the measurements were the temporal mean gradient and autocorrelation of the axial-velocity fluctuation and the intermittency factor. The fluctuating-pressure and turbulence-intensity fields were observed to be closely similar in form. Through use of the measured distributions of mean-flow and turbulence characteristics, all terms of the integral and differential forms of the momentum and mean-energy equations were evaluated throughout the region. The results are presented herein by curves of variation of each of the terms as they appear in the corresponding equations.


1996 ◽  
Vol 118 (2) ◽  
pp. 308-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. Durbin ◽  
M. D. Vangsness ◽  
D. R. Ballal ◽  
V. R. Katta

A prime requirement in the design of a modern gas turbine combustor is good combustion stability, especially near lean blowout (LBO), to ensure an adequate stability margin. For an aeroengine, combustor blow-off limits are encountered during low engine speeds at high altitudes over a range of flight Mach numbers. For an industrial combustor, requirements of ultralow NOx emissions coupled with high combustion efficiency demand operation at or close to LBO. In this investigation, a step swirl combustor (SSC) was designed to reproduce the swirling flow pattern present in the vicinity of the fuel injector located in the primary zone of a gas turbine combustor. Different flame shapes, structure, and location were observed and detailed experimental measurements and numerical computations were performed. It was found that certain combinations of outer and inner swirling air flows produce multiple attached flames, aflame with a single attached structure just above the fuel injection tube, and finally for higher inner swirl velocity, the flame lifts from the fuel tube and is stabilized by the inner recirculation zone. The observed difference in LBO between co- and counterswirl configurations is primarily a function of how the flame stabilizes, i.e., attached versus lifted. A turbulent combustion model correctly predicts the attached flame location(s), development of inner recirculation zone, a dimple-shaped flame structure, the flame lift-off height, and radial profiles of mean temperature, axial velocity, and tangential velocity at different axial locations. Finally, the significance and applications of anchored and lifted flames to combustor stability and LBO in practical gas turbine combustors are discussed.


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