🔥 I'm excited to present my work at ASME's Turbo Expo 🚀 in London. Is anyone else attending? 🔥
NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE COMBUSTION PROCESS IN A LEAN BURN GAS TURBINE FUEL INJECTOR
The present work investigates the aerodynamics and combustion characteristics of a novel fuel flexible lean burn fuel injector. Methane and hydrogen are considered as the fuel with different mixing ratios. Flame stability, temperature distribution, and species concentration are assessed to obtain the operational characteristics of the fuel injector. The injector assembly consists of pilot and main mixer blocks and each of them includes a set of axial and radial swirler assemblies. Considering the mixture as partially premixed, steady-state RANS turbulent combustion modelling is performed with standard k-epsilon model and steady diffusion flamelet model. Hydrogen is blended with methane with different mixing ratios ranging from 0-100%. Four geometrical configurations with pilot and main mixer fuel-air combination are considered with representative flow conditions. The pilot and main mixers generate individual recirculation zones and stable flame anchoring is observed for all cases. A uniform and symmetric temperature distribution is observed with Two Temperature peaks corresponding to main and pilot flame fronts. The hardware anchors the flame till 50% hydrogen concentration and any further addition resulted in an unstable flame.