Stabilization of Auto-Igniting Flames Within a Gas Turbine Sequential Combustor, Through the Control of Static Temperature Variation—Detailed Numerical Investigation

Abstract

Axially staged combustion systems offer both enhanced operability and fuel flexibility for gas turbines, allowing stable operation and low emissions across a wide range of engine loads. The sequential combustion concept, where the first combustion stage is supported by a standard lean premixed flame and the second stage relies on an auto-ignition-dominated flame, forms the focus of the present contribution. Within the present state of the art, the still-oxygen-rich exhaust gases from the first stage are mixed with second stage fuel within a sequential burner. Within the presently investigated concept, the flame is anchored by establishing a positive static temperature gradient within the burner. The advantage of such a concept is that it potentially allows for very small combustor residence times and can be easily incorporated into an integrated combustor–nozzle guide vane. The concept does however present significant challenges, which are investigated within then present contribution. A critical challenge is that, in order to setup the static temperature gradient, the flow has to be accelerated to a relatively high Mach number, ca. 0.7, and then decelerated in a diffusing section where the flame is located. Achieving fuel/air premixing and combustion, while achieving acceptable pressure drops is not trivial at the high velocities. Additionally, the dynamic stability of the concept is not clear and needs to be investigated. Within the present work, compressible computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to investigate the pressure drop characteristics within the system. It is demonstrated that for the system a total pressure drop of less than 6% can be achieved. To realize this, the premixing section includes multipoint fuel injection coupled with mixing devices. The arrangement is designed to both limit excessive pressure losses by focusing losses within regions of the flow where they contribute effectively to fuel/air mixing as well as locating the flame where Rayleigh losses are acceptable. The dynamic behavior of the system is studied by way of two-dimensional (2D) fully premixed CFD. Investigation of the flame response to harmonic perturbations in inlet temperature shows that the flame transfer function (FTF) is characterized by amplitude growing, in line with the concept of auto-ignition at low Mach number, linearly with frequency. The rate of growth with frequency of the FTF amplitude is rather high reaching up to 60 times the imposed relative fluctuation of inlet temperature at a frequency of 600 Hz. This rapid growth is in line with the behavior of auto-ignition at low Mach number. A substantial difference with the low Mach number concept is given by upstream traveling acoustic waves generated by the flame that going through high Mach number locations, can affect, in respect of the conservation of entropy transported by convection, the upstream temperature distribution and therefore auto-ignition itself.