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This work presents an experimental study on the influence of the pilot flame characteristics on the flame morphology and exhaust emissions of a turbulent swirling flame. A reduced-scale burner, inspired by that fitted in the AE-T100 micro gas turbine, was employed as the experimental platform to evaluate methane (CH4) and an ammonia-methane fuel blend with an ammonia (NH3) volume fraction of 0.7. The power ratio (PR) between the pilot flame and the main flame and the fuel composition of the pilot flame was investigated. The pilot power ratio was varied from 0 to 20% for both fuel compositions tested. The NH3 volume fraction in the pilot flame ranged from pure CH4 to pure NH3 through various NH3–CH4 blends. Flame images and exhaust emissions, namely CO2, CO, NO, and N2O were recorded. It was found that increasing the pilot power ratio produces more stable flames and influences most of the exhaust emissions measured. The CO2 concentration in the exhaust gases was roughly constant for CH4-air or NH3–CH4–air flames. In addition, a CO2 concentration reduction of about 45% was achieved for XNH3 = 0.70 compared with pure CH4, while still producing stable flames as long as PR ≥ 5%. The pilot power ratio was found to have a higher relative impact on NO emissions for CH4 than for NH3–CH4, with measured exhaust NO percentage increments of about 276% and 11%, respectively. The N2O concentration was constant for all pilot power ratios for CH4 but it decreased when the pilot power ratio increased for NH3–CH4. The pilot fuel composition highly affected the NO and N2O emissions. Pure CH4 pilot flames and higher power ratios produced higher NO emissions. Conversely, the NO concentration was roughly constant for pure NH3 pilot flames, regardless of the pilot power ratio. Qualitative OH-PLIF images were recorded to further investigate these trends. Results showed that the pilot power ratio and the pilot fuel composition modified the flame morphology and the OH concentration, which both influence NO emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports measurements of stability limits and exhaust NO mole fractions of technically-premixed swirl ammonia-air flames enriched with either methane or hydrogen. Experiments were conducted at different pressures from atmospheric to 5 bar, representative of commercial micro gas turbines. The full range of ammonia fractions in the fuel blend, x NH3 , was considered, from 0 (pure methane or hydrogen) to 1 (pure ammonia), covering very lean (φ = 0.25) to rich (φ = 1.60) equivalence ratios. Results show that increasing pressure widens the range of stable equivalence ratios for pure ammonia-air flames. Regardless of pressure, there is a critical ammonia fraction above which the range of stable equivalence ratios suddenly widens. This is because flashback does not occur anymore when the equivalence ratio is progressively increased towards stoichiometric and rich blowout occurs instead. This critical ammonia fraction increases with pressure and is larger for ammonia-hydrogen than for ammonia-methane. Provided that enough hydrogen is blended with ammonia (x NH3 < 0.9), flames with very lean equivalence ratios (φ < 0.7) can be stabilized and these yield competitively low NO emissions (<200 ppm), regardless of pressure. For this reason, very lean swirl ammonia-hydrogen-air flames are promising candidates for micro gas turbines. However, N 2 O emissions have the potential to be unacceptably large for these operating conditions if heat loss is too large or residence time is too short. As a consequence, the post flame region must be considered carefully. Due to the lower reactivity of methane compared to that of hydrogen, very lean swirl ammonia-methane-air flames could not be stabilized and good NO performance is limited to rich equivalence ratios for ammonia-methane fuel blends. The equivalence ratio above which good NO performance depends on pressure and bulk velocity. • Increasing pressure widens the range of stability of ammonia-air flames. • Increasing pressure increases the ammonia fuel fraction for which the transition from flashback to rich blowout occurs. • NO emissions from ammonia-hydrogen/methane-air flames decrease as pressure increases. • Good NO performance is found for very lean ammonia-hydrogen-air flames under elevated pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes different strategies of plasma actuation of premixed swirl flames at pressures up to 3 bar. A wide range of applied voltages and pulse repetition frequencies (PRF) is considered, resulting in different combinations of nanosecond repetitively pulsed (NRP) discharge regimes, NRP glow and NRP spark discharges. Electrical characterization of the discharges is performed, measuring voltage and current, and deposited energy and power are evaluated. The effectiveness of the plasma actuation is assessed through images of OH* chemiluminescence from the flame. From these images, the distance of the center of gravity of the flame to the burner plate is evaluated, with and without plasma actuation. The results show that strategies which involve a high percentage of NRP sparks are effective at improving flame anchoring at atmospheric pressure, while they are detrimental at higher pressures. Therefore, high applied voltage and low PRF are preferable at atmospheric pressure, while the opposite is observed at elevated pressures. Moreover, it is found that a ratio of plasma power to thermal power of the flame around 1% is the best compromise between a strong actuation of the flame and a reasonable deposited electrical power. Explanations for these results are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The stability limits of a turbulent flame in a practical combustor are important characteristics that influence its performance. The mechanisms controlling the stability limits of turbulent non-premixed flames are examined here in the canonical configuration of a fuel jet in co-flow air. This study focuses on the conditions leading to the detachment of flames from the injector nozzle by means of an experimental parametric study in which pressure (1 ≤ P ≤ 10 bar), fuel (methane and ethane), nozzle wall thickness (t = 0.20 mm, 0.58 mm, and 0.89 mm), jet velocity (0.5 ≤ U j ≤ 16.5 m s−1), and co-flow velocity (U c = 0.3 m s−1, 0.6 m s−1, and 0.9 m s−1) are varied. It is shown that the mechanism leading to detachment depends on the ratio of the nozzle wall thickness to the laminar flame thickness. If this ratio is smaller than 3, the nozzle is "thin" and type I detachment occurs (flame base stability lifting). In this case, the detachment velocity decreases with pressure and is proportional to the laminar burning velocity. If the ratio is larger than 3 , the nozzle is "thick" and type II detachment occurs (local flame extinction lifting). Then, the detachment velocity is controlled by the extinction strain rate. Experiments also show that the Kolmogorov scale of turbulence regulates local flame extinction and type II detachment and a model is proposed to predict detachment for any fuel, pressure, and nozzle wall thickness using the computed extinction strain rate and the Kolmogorov time scale. Finally, the data show that elevating pressure allows stabilizing attached non-premixed jet flames with high Reynolds numbers without the need for complex stabilization strategies such as pilot flames, swirl, or oxygen/hydrogen enrichment. Pressure allows studying flame/turbulence interactions at Reynolds numbers relevant to practical applications while conserving simple configurations amenable to diagnostics and modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the effect of pressure on the response of methane–air and propane–air swirl flames to acoustic excitation of the flow. These effects are analyzed on the basis of the flame transfer function (FTF) formalism, experimentally determined from velocity and global OH* chemiluminescence measurements at pressures up to 5 bar. In parallel, phase-locked images of OH* chemiluminescence are collected and analyzed in order to determine the associated flame dynamics. Flame transfer functions and visual flame dynamics at atmospheric pressure are found to be similar to previous studies with comparable experimental conditions. Regardless of pressure, propane flames exhibit a much larger FTF gain than methane flames. For both fuels, the effect of pressure primarily is to modify the gain response at the local maximum of the FTF, at a Strouhal number around 0.5 (176 Hz). For methane flames, this gain maximum increases monotonically with pressure, while for propane flames it increases from 1 to 3 bar and decreases from 3 to 5 bar. At this frequency and regardless of pressure, the flame motion is driven by flame vortex roll-up, suggesting that pressure affects the FTF by modifying the interaction of the flame with the vortex detached from the injector rim during a forcing period. The complex heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and combustion coupling in this configuration does not allow keeping the vortex properties constant when pressure is increased. However, the different trends of the FTF gain observed for methane and propane fuels with increasing pressure imply that intrinsic flame properties and fuel chemistry, and their variation with pressure, play an important role in controlling the response of these flames to acoustic forcing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Piloted turbulent nonpremixed jet flames are studied at high pressure/Re. • Soot inception zone migrates upstream as pressure increases, even for constant U. • Corrugation of OH layer increases as Re increases through density. • Frequency of OH layer separation increases as pressure/Re increase. • OH layer fragments into smaller "islands" as Re increases. A recently commissioned high-pressure combustion duct is used to investigate a family of ten, piloted, sooting, turbulent nonpremixed flames over a range of pressures and Reynolds numbers. For all conditions, the central jet is composed of 35% ethylene and 65% nitrogen by volume. In one series of flames, the Reynolds number is kept constant while the pressure is increased, whereas in the other series, the bulk jet velocity is maintained. The maximum pressure, p , is 5 bar and the maximum Reynolds number, Re, is 50,000. A DSLR camera and 10-kHz OH-PLIF are used to characterized the near field. DSLR camera images show that the length of the blue region immediately downstream of the nozzle decreases as the pressure increases, rapidly in the constant Reynolds number series, and gradually in the constant velocity series. Analysis of OH-PLIF images in the near field show that corrugation of the flame front is fairly insensitive to changes in pressure if the Reynolds number is held constant. As the Reynolds number (and pressure) is increased, the flame front becomes more corrugated and the frequency of OH layer extinction increases. This leads to smaller "islands" of OH that are separated by shorter distances. However, despite increased local extinction, the flames remain attached even as the Reynolds number is increased to more than twice the maximum Reynolds number that is possible at atmospheric pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]