Smoke Characteristics of Distillate and Residual Fuel Burning in Gas Turbine Combustors

During the development of a rich-lean staged dry low NOx combustor, the conventional trend of increasing smoke with increasing operating equivalence ratio was found when tests were run with distillate fuel (%H = 13.0). However, when tests were run with residual fuel (%H = 11.4), the trend was reversed. In addition, when the same combustor was run with blends of distillate fuel and residual fuel, a drastic improvement of smoke was observed when only 6 percent of residual fuel was mixed with distillate fuel, and for any blending of more than 10 percent of residual fuel the combustor was practically smoke free. A chemical analysis of fuel samples revealed an appreciable amount of trace metals in the residual fuel, giving rise to the suspicion that the smoke reduction may have been due in part to these trace metals. Of these elements found, vanadium is believed to be the most likely to cause smoke reduction because of its relatively high concentration.