Numerical Investigations on the Effects of Dome Cooling Air Flow on Combustion Characteristics and Emission Behavior in a Can-Type Gas Turbine Combustor

To meet the requirements of achieving higher efficiency and lower NOx pollution, the flame temperature in gas turbine combustors increases continually; thus, the effusion-cooling technology has been used to ensure the combustor liner remains within the allowed temperature, by which the combustion characteristics and emission behavior are possibly influenced. In order to investigate the effects of dome cooling air flow on combustion characteristics and NOx emissions, three-dimensional combustion simulations for a swirl-stabilized can-type gas turbine combustor are carried out in this work by using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. Through adjusting the ratio of the dome cooling air flow and the dilution cooling air flow, the characteristics of flow field, temperature distribution and NOx emissions under each work condition are analyzed. At different ratios of the dome-cooling air flow to the total air flow, the flow velocity field in the region near the center of the combustion chamber is not changed much, while the velocity field near the chamber wall shows a more significant difference. The temperature in the outer recirculation zone within the combustion chamber is effectively reduced as the dome cooling air flow increases. By analyzing the distribution characteristics of the concentration of OH*, it is demonstrated that the dome cooling air flow does not have a direct effect on the reaction of combustion. It is also found that as the ratio of the dome cooling air flow to the total air flow increases from 0 to 0.15, the value of the NOx emissions drops from 28.4 to 26.3 ppmv, about a 7.4% decrease. The distribution of the NOx generation rate in the combustion chamber does not vary significantly with the increasing dome cooling air flow. Furthermore, by calculating the residence time in different stages, when the the ratio of the dome cooling air flow to the total air flow varies from 0 to 0.15, the residence time in the pilot stage decreases obviously, from 42 ms to 18 ms. This means that reduction in residence time is the main factor in the decrease of NOx emissions when the dome cooling air flow increases.