par Fortunato, Valentina 
Président du jury Degrez, Gérard
Promoteur Parente, Alessandro
Publication Non publié, 2017-08-23
Président du jury Degrez, Gérard
Promoteur Parente, Alessandro
Publication Non publié, 2017-08-23
Thèse de doctorat
| Résumé : | Nowadays, in the field of energy production, particular attention must be paid to improving efficiency, reducing pollutants and fuel flexibility. To reach those goals, cogenerative systems represent an appealing solution. One of the most promising cogenerative systems available nowadays is the micro turbine, which provides reasonable electrical efficiency of about 30%, multi-fuel capability, low emission levels and heat recovery potential, and need minimum maintenance. Among the several options, micro gas turbines (mGT) are particularly interesting. Beside theuse of natural gas, other fuels like landfill gas, ethanol, industrial waste off-gases and other bio-based gases can be used. Moreover, it is possible to further improve the efficiencies and reduce the emissions for mGTs by paying particular attention at the design of the combustion chamber. To this goal, flameless combustion could be an interesting solution. Flameless combustion is able to provide high combustion efficiency with low NOx and soot emissions. The increasing interest in flameless combustion is motivated by its large fuel flexibility, representing a promising technology for low-calorific value fuels, high-calorific industrial wastes as well as in presence of hydrogen. Moreover, flameless combustion is very stableand noiseless, so it is suited for gas turbine applications where conventional operations may lead to significant thermo-acoustic instabilities (“humming”) and stresses. Flameless combustion needs the reactants to be preheated above their self-ignition temperature and enough inert combustion products to be entrained in the reaction region, in order to dilute the flame. As a result, the temperature field is more uniform than in traditional combustion systems, and it does not show high temperature peaks. Hence, NOx formation is suppressed as well as soot formation,due to the lean conditions, low temperatures and the large CO2 concentration in the exhausts.mGTs operating in flameless combustion regime represent a promising technology for the combined production of heat and power with increased efficiency, reduced pollutants emission and high fuel flexibility. The objective of the present Thesis is the design of a combustion chamber for amGT for residential applications. The design is performed employing CFD-tools. Thus, it is necessary to develop a reliable numerical model to use in the design process. Therefore, the first step of the Thesis consists in a series of validation studies, with the goal of selecting the most appropriate and reliable models to describe flameless combustion. The validation will be carried on three differenttest cases, which have different nominal powers and employ different gaseous fuels. The second part of the Thesis focuses on the design and optimization of the combustion chamber. Finally, the third part shows the experimental investigation of the aforementioned chamber.The study of those three cases shows that, to correctly predict the behavior of those systems, it is necessary to take into account both mixing and chemical kinetics. The best results have been obtained with the Eddy Dissipation Concept model, coupled with detailed kinetic schemes. As far as the NOx emissions are concerned, it is fundamental to include all the formation routes, i.e. thermal, prompt, via N2O and NNH route, to estimate properly the NOx production in flameless conditions.The aforementioned models have been used for the design and optimization of a combustion chamber for a mGT operating in flameless combustion regime. Both the design and the optimization have been carried out by means of CFD simulations and both are goal-oriented, meaning that they are carried out with the purpose of improving one or more performance indicators of the chamber, such as pollutants emissions, efficiency or pressure losses. The configuration that satisfies the criteria on the performance indicators has been built and investigated experimentally. The combustion chamber is stable and performs well in terms of emissions for a wide range of air inlet temperature and air-fuel equivalence ratio, lambda, values. Except for the condition closer to the stoichiometric one, both CO and NOx emissions are extremely low for all ! and air inlet temperatures. Thechamber performs the best at its nominal operating condition, i.e. lambda = 3.5 and air inlet temperature 730 °C, In this case CO is 0 ppm and NOx is 5.6 ppm. The numerical model employed to describe the combustor performs quite well, except for the CO prediction, for all the conditions investigated. The final step of the present work is the application of a different kind of fuel, namely biogas. First the feasibility of such application has been evaluated using CFD calculations, and then the experimental evidence has been discussed. Due to a calibration error on the gas flow meter, it has not been possible to investigate the conditions of the design point (lambda = 3.5). Three other conditions have been examined,characterized by lower values of !, closer to the stoichiometric conditions. Despite the relatively high values of NOx emissions due to the lower air excess and to the consequently higher temperatures, the combustion chamber has proven to be fuel flexible. Both ignition and stable combustion can be achieved also when biogas is burnt. Numerical simulations have also been performed; the results are in good agreement with the experimental evidence. |
