Role of Adiabatic Flame Temperature on Controlling Operability of a Micromixer-Based Gas Turbine Combustor Holding Premixed Oxy-Flames for Carbon Capture

The study presents an experimental and numerical investigation to determine the role of adiabatic lame temperature on controlling the operability of a micromixer-based gas turbine model combustor holding premixed CH4/CO2/O2 non-swirl jet flame for carbon capture. The experimental test rig consists of a mixing pipe and multihole/micromixer-like burner of 61 tubes. The numerical aspect of the study is achieved using the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) approach. Models of the ANSYS Fluent are used to solve elliptical governing equations involved in the combustion system. Since flames under consideration are jet premixed releasing into a quiescent atmosphere, the partially premixed combustion of species model is used. Large eddy simulation (LES) is used as the turbulence model while radiative transfer equation (RTE) is solved using discrete ordinate (DO). A good agreement between experimental and numerical results is achieved. Results indicated that adiabatic flame temperature (Tad) controls the flame macrostructure, oxygen fraction (OF) controls the peak of the product formation rate rather than Tad, and positions of OH radical reaffirmed that Tad controls the flame macrostructure and increasing the OF leads to reaction rate dominancy and, hence, increases the Damkohler number.