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Hydrogen Combustion in Gas Turbines

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Hydrogen for Future Thermal Engines

Part of the book series: Green Energy and Technology ((GREEN))

Abstract

The development of gas turbines using 100% hydrogen as fuel is an important step towards the development of new energy and propulsion technologies using zero carbon fuels. This chapter reviews some elements of combustion science and engineering that can help with these developments. Stable and low-NO\(_{x}\) hydrogen combustors face significant challenges. Stabilisation of the flame at the right location without autoignition or flashback, with low NO\(_{x}\) production, and without any thermoacoustic oscillations is important to achieve. Some new combustor architectures addressing these requirements are reviewed. The importance of mixing history is emphasised and some novel tools that can be used for assessing the effects of mixing on NO\(_{x}\) are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

The authors’ experience on hydrogen gas turbine combustion, which has led to the opinions expressed in this chapter, has been based on research funded by the European Union, the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, and long-term industrial partners (Rolls-Royce Group, Siemens Energy, Reaction Engines Ltd).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 1PZ, UK

    Savvas Gkantonas & Epaminondas Mastorakos

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College London, London, WC1E 7JE, UK

    Midhat Talibi & Ramanarayanan Balachandran

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  1. Savvas Gkantonas
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  2. Midhat Talibi
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  3. Ramanarayanan Balachandran
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  4. Epaminondas Mastorakos
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Correspondence to Epaminondas Mastorakos .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and the Built Environment, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK

    Efstathios-Al. Tingas

Supplementary Material

Supplementary Material

H2ools [78] is a MATLAB-based package containing a range of routines with the aim to analyse results from numerical simulations of fundamental combustion quantities for ammonia-hydrogen-air flames at gas turbine conditions and conduct comparisons with kerosene so as to assist the design of zero-carbon aviation propulsion. The package contains data for thermodynamic and transport properties of fuel-air mixtures, flame temperatures, autoignition delay times, laminar burning velocity, nitrogen oxide (NO\(_{x}\), N2O) pollutant formation and well-stirred reactor computations. In its current form, the data can reveal specific trends between fuels and operating conditions that are useful to the R &D engineer or hydrogen combustion researcher for extrapolating design rules and methodologies and combustor concepts from kerosene to ammonia-hydrogen and hydrogen fuels. Furthermore, it can be used to inform elaborate simulations of the laminar/turbulent combustion of these fuels by appropriate extraction of correlations (e.g., for the laminar burning velocity as a function of temperature and pressure) and tabulation of properties or chemical reaction source terms, typically used by CFD models.

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Gkantonas, S., Talibi, M., Balachandran, R., Mastorakos, E. (2023). Hydrogen Combustion in Gas Turbines. In: Tingas, EA. (eds) Hydrogen for Future Thermal Engines. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28412-0_10

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