Operating Characteristics of a Flameless Combustor Obtained By Experiments Informed Modelling

Abstract

Flameless Combustion is an interesting low NOx combustion technology for gas turbine engines. In order to design systems for stringent performance standards, it is important to understand emission formation in this regime. To this end, the characteristics of a combustor capable of operating in the Flameless regime are studied. Particle Image Velocimetry and thermocouple measurements were performed to obtain the velocity field and gas temperatures respectively, in the combustor under reacting conditions. Results from experiments were used to generate an “informed” chemical reactor network (CRN) model from which, temperature and species distributions were obtained. As such, this paper presents measured data and a methodology to combine it with CRN modelling to obtain gas composition and temperature. The temperature, NOx, CO and O2 mole fractions obtained at three different operating conditions shall be validated with gas composition measurements in the future.