Computational Analysis of Droplet Motion in Industrial Compressor Intakes Available to Purchase

Water droplets enter compressors for a number of reasons, such as rain ingestion in aero engines; inlet fogging, and online washing for industrial engines. Several methods have been developed to examine their behaviour within compressors for a number of these applications, particularly of relevance for industrial engines, for wet compression. To further the understanding of the behaviour of compressors with water ingestion, it is important to establish the means by which water droplets are entering the compressor, so that appropriate inlet boundary conditions can be applied within the compressor, and so that droplet spray systems can be optimised. In this paper, Lagrangian droplet tracking methods have been applied to droplet motion within compressor intakes to model the flow of droplets from spray to compressor first stage. It is found that, due to the geometry of the intake and the gas flow patterns found, the droplets enter the compressor with significant non-uniformity, and the distribution of droplets is strongly dependent on droplet size, for all droplet sizes considered. The technique has been applied to two sample cases: one that is typical of a high fogging type application and one that is typical of an online washing application. In each case, the way in which the method can be used to optimise the positions of water sprays is examined.