Experimental Study on Lean Blowout Limits of Turbulent Premixed Hydrogen/Ammonia/Air Mixtures

Abstract

As the demand for greenhouse gas neutral transportation and power generation solutions is growing, alternative carbon-free fuel such as hydrogen (H2) and ammonia (NH3) are gaining more attention. Mixtures of both fuels allow the adjustment of combustion properties. With future fuels also the vision of very clean combustion can be taken into the focus, being for instance based on lean premixed and for liquid fuels prevaporized combustion for gas turbines. For the utilization of such concepts, however, flame stability is essential. In this study the upper stability limits, i.e. lean blowout of turbulent hydrogen/ammonia/air flames, is experimentally investigated in a generic non-swirl premixed burner at atmospheric conditions. Special focus is laid on a measurement setup with fully automatized measurement procedure, to reach the stability limits, as these limits tend to depend for instance on the approach speed towards the limit. The ammonia content was varied from 0 vol% to 50 vol% in 10 vol% steps with the rest being hydrogen, for a broad range of fuel-air-equivalence ratios. The lean blowout limit is increasing almost linearly with increasing fuel-air-equivalence ratios, whereas with increasing ammonia content the limit is decreasing. Furthermore, a model for the lean blowout limits were derived, which is able to predict the acquired experimental data with high accuracy.