Enhancing Fuel Flexibility in Solar’s® Titan™ 250 Dry Low Emissions Combustion System

Abstract

Industrial gas turbines serve in a variety of markets involving wide ranging duty cycles, fuel types and quality and emission requirements. For the Oil & Gas markets, applications range from mechanical drive, compressor sets and electrical generation that may be located in developed, remote or off-shore areas requiring a backup fuel (usually a liquid fuel). Upstream applications often require the gas turbine to burn a wide Wobbe range of fuels with varying gas compositions. For Power Generation applications, flexibility in operating range and low emissions are usually required. This paper describes Solar’s latest SoLoNOx™ (DLE) combustion system developments for the Titan 250 for both gaseous and liquid fuels with a focus on fuel type and quality, operability and emissions from both rig and engine tests. Several combustion systems will be discussed including gas only, dual fuel and a dual fuel Lean Direct Injection (LDI) system for burning lower quality liquid fuels. Engine tests were performed with blends of reactive gases (propane and butane), inert gas (carbon dioxide) and natural gas covering a wide Wobbe range from 30 to 60 WI (MJ/Nm3). Full engine qualification testing was performed which included operability, emissions and combustion stability for both the gas only and LDI combustion systems. The LDI system is based on the dry low emissions combustion system used for gas operation and thus offers low NOx emissions on gaseous fuels with the ability to burn lower quality liquid fuels for backup operation. A dual fuel lean premixed combustion system was also fully engine qualified for natural gas and liquid fuel. High pressure single injector rig tests using hydrogen blends with pipeline quality natural gas were also performed to qualify these fuels for engine operation in the dry low emission combustion systems with up to 30% hydrogen. The primary focus of testing was to determine overall operability, turndown, flashback risk and emissions.