Experimental Investigation of Spray and Combustion Performances of a Fuel-Staged Low Emission Combustor: Part II — Effects of Venturi Angle

In order to reduce NOx emissions, modern gas turbines are often equipped with lean burn combustion systems, where the high-velocity fuel-lean conditions that limit NOx formation in combustors also inhibit the ability of ignition, high altitude relight, and lean combustion stability. To face these issues, an internally staged scheme of fuel injection is proposed. The pilot and main fuel staging enable fuel distribution control and high turn-down ratio, multi-injections of main fuel leads to a fast and efficient fuel/air mixing. A fuel-staged low emission combustor in the framework of lean burn combustion is developed in the present study, the central pilot stage of fuel injector working singly at low power operating conditions is swirl-cup prefilming atomization and main stage is jet-in-crossflow multi-injection atomization, a combination of pilot and main stage injection is provided for higher power operating conditions. A significant amount of the air mass flow utilised for fuel preparation and initiation is adverse to the operability specifications, such as ignition, lean blow-out, and high-altitude relight etc. The spray characteristics of pilot spray and flow field are one of the key factors affecting combustion operability. This work investigates the effects of the venturi angle on combustion operability, the ignition and lean blow-out performances were evaluated in a single dome rectangular combustor. Furthermore, the spray patterns and flow field are characterized by kerosene-planar laser induced fluorescence and particle image velocimetry to provide insight into the correlation between spray, flow field and combustion operability performances.