Numerical Analysis of Combustion Performance in a Lean-Premixed Low-NOx Combustor

Recently the lean-premixed combustors are drawing a considerable attention for reduction of harmful emissions from gas-turbine engines, such as NOx The amount of the NOx emitted from the engine is dependent on the various configuration of the combustor inside the engine. For different configurations of fuel injection orifices and two different fuel types, a numerical analysis was performed on the combustion characteristics of a premixed combustor with tangential entry (TE) nozzle, which was developed by the United Technology Research Center (UTRC). The present numerical calculation revealed that the combustion phenomena were generally concentrated near inner wall of the combustion-chamber, and observed that high-temperature-flames penetrated into the TE nozzle. Also the results of the calculation for a gaseous fuel, methane, showed a good comparison with the experimental results obtained by UTRC fur a similar condition. Finally, in the present study, the optimized configuration of orifices for a liquid fuel, pentane, to reduce NO was proposed.