Gas Turbines Design and Off-Design Performance Analysis With Emissions Evaluation

Abstract

Many gas turbines simulation codes have been developed to estimate power plant performance both in design and off-design conditions in order to establish the adequate control criteria or the possible cycle improvements; estimation of pollutant emissions would be very important using these codes in order to determine the optimal performance satisfying legal emission restrictions. This paper present the description of a one-dimensional emission model to simulate different gas turbine combustor typologies, such as conventional diffusion flame combustors, dry-low NOx combustors (DLN) based on lean-premixed technology (LPC) or rich quench lean scheme (RQL) and the new catalytic combustors. This code is based on chemical reactor analysis, using detailed kinetics mechanisms, and it is integrated with an existing power plant simulation code (ESMS Energy System Modular Simulator) to analyze the effects of power plant operations and configurations on emissions. The main goal of this job is the study of the interaction between engine control and combustion system. This is a critical issue for all DLN combustors and, in particular, when burning low-LHV fuel. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of different control criteria with regard to pollutant emissions and engine performances. In this paper we present several simulations of actual engines comparing the obtained results with the experimental published data.