On the Demonstration of a Humid Combustion System Performing Flexible Fuel-Switch From Pure Hydrogen to Natural Gas With Ultra-Low NOx Emissions

Abstract

To fight global warming the European Union formulated the objective of completely decarbonizing the energy sector, stimulating the advent of unconventional fuels and the adaption of the corresponding energy infrastructure. The decarbonization strategy identified hydrogen to play a key role as an energy storage medium, making systems capable of pure hydrogen operation essential. This requirement can be fulfilled with humid power cycles which offer additional advantages such as highly efficient and fuel-flexible operation with low emissions. As an integral part of such a cycle, a humid combustion system was presented previously showing promising results with respect to complete combustion with low emissions for a variety of fuels. The current work introduces an upgraded version of that combustion system. The new Double Swirler system is capable of stable and safe combustion of low calorific value biosyngas surrogate, hydrogen, and natural gas, from dry to steam-rich conditions within the required pressure drops. The inclusion of dry operation of the system can benefit the startup procedure of the humid cycle. The combustor's fuel switching performance is demonstrated by a fast fuel switch at full load from pure hydrogen to pure natural gas and vice versa, while maintaining a stable performance with low NOx-emissions at otherwise constant operation parameters.