Advancing Combustion Technology Through NETL Partnerships
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ETL conducts combustion re-search in partnership with in-dustry and university-industry con-sortia to address the challenges associated with achieving sub-stantial gains in efficiency and en-vironmental performance, and expanding fuel options for gas tur-bines. As discussed previously, moving to higher temperatures and pressures for efficiency improve-ment conflicts with the need for low emissions. Using new gas tur-bine cycles and operating on lower energy density renewable or op-portunity fuels introduce addi-tional demands on combustion.
To address combustion chal-lenges, NETL’s on-site research supports the ATS program by devel-oping and evaluating new technol-ogy for ATS applications. The NETL laboratories have provided public data on various issues asso-ciated with low-emission combus-tion, including the stability behavior of low-emission combustion, novel combustor concepts, and combus-tion in new engine cycles.
The NETL research is often carried out through partnerships with industrial or academic col-laborators. Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) can be used to protect participants’ intellectual property, while other approaches such as shar-ing public data have produced ben-efits to the various members of the turbine community. The following activities exemplify NETL’s gas tur-bine research.
Surface Stabilized Combustion
NETL teamed with Alzeta Cor-poration to investigate a new ap-proach to ultra-low-NOx (2 ppm or less) combustion under high tem-perature and pressure regimes—Sur-face-Stabilized Combustion (SSC). The Low Emissions Combustor Test and Research (LECTR) facility at NETL provided the test platform for the investigation. LECTR is readily adaptable to a variety of combustor designs, and is capable of deliver-ing representative gas turbine tem-peratures and pressures.
SSC may offer improved perfor-mance compared to existing DLN combustors, which use high excess air levels to reduce flame tempera-tures and thus NO emissions.
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The SSC DLN burner uses a thin, compressed, and sintered porous metal fiber mat (Pyromat) at the burner inlet to stabilize combustion. The Pyromat stabilizes combustion by maintaining the presence of a high-temperature surface in the fuel-air flow path.
Testing at NETL defined the key parameters and operating enve-lope, and refined the design. Sub-sequent testing in conjunction with Solar Turbines validated ultra-low-NO x andlow CO emissions per-formance, further developed the hardware, and positioned the tech-nology for commercialization.
Humid Air Combustion
The Humid Air Turbine (HAT) cycle is an advanced gas turbine cycle in which water-saturated air is introduced along with gaseous fu-els, and is combusted at high pres-sure. Projected advantages are reduced NOx, and enhanced power output gained by increasing mass flow through the turbine. The HAT cycle could potentially provide a low-cost option for power genera-tion, with high thermal efficiency and rapid startup time.
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