Analysis of the combustion characteristics of hydrogen and hydrocarbon fuels based on the results of numerical simulation

Abstract

At present, an upward trend in the field of studying the processes of hydrogen combustion in the combustion chambers of the ground-based gas turbine power plants is obvious. The use of pure hydrogen as a fuel gas would solve the problem of environmental decarbonization. One of the emerging problems is to ensure the stable combustion of such fuels in combustion chambers of various applications. The information-analytical review of studies showed that there is a large number of theoretical and experimental results on the diffusion and homogeneous combustion of hydrogen and hydrogen-containing fuels in various burners and combustion chambers, which are not part of the existing gas turbine power plants. The purpose of this work is a comparative analysis of the gas-dynamic and emission characteristics of the combustion of the hydrogen-air and methane-air components based on the results of numerical simulation of a convertible combustion chamber of a 75 kW microgas turbine power plant. This goal is achieved by numerical simulation of the diffusion combustion of hydrogen and methane with air in a convertible combustion chamber. The most significant result of the work is obtaining the isosurface of the flame, which made it possible to obtain the conditions for stable combustion in the form of the Damköhler criterion and the ratio of the midsection velocity to the velocity of turbulent combustion. The significance of the results obtained lies in the further development of the methodology for the conversion of megawatt-class gas turbine plants to hydrogen and hydrogencontaining fuels.