Stratified and Hydrogen Combustion Techniques for Higher Turndown and Lower Emissions in Gas Turbines

This review overviews combustion technologies for reduced emissions and better fuel economy in the industrial gas turbine. Lean premixed combustion (LPM) technology is introduced as a low-temperature combustion technique to control NOx emissions. The dry low NOx (DLN) is one of the most promising LPM-based combustors for controlling NOx emissions. However, DLN combustors suffer from limited flame stability, especially under low load (near blowout) operating conditions, in addition to the difficulty of separating CO2 from the exhaust stream for reducing the gas-turbine carbon footprint. Trying to overcome such difficulties, the gas turbine manufacturers developed enhanced-design burners for higher turndown and lower NOx emissions, including the Dual Annular Counter Rotating Swirl (DACRS) and environmental-vortex (EV) burners. The volume of the DACRS combustors is almost twice the conventional burners, which provide ample residence time for complete combustion. The mixing effectiveness is improved in EV-burners resulting in higher flame stability at low load or startup conditions. To widen the operability, control the emissions, and improve the turndown ratio of gas turbine combustors, the concept of flame stratification, i.e., heterogenization of the overall equivalence ratio, was introduced. This technique can widen the stability range of existing LPM flames for industrial applications. Integrating stratified combustion techniques with oxy-fuel combustion technology is a way forward that may result in complete control of gas turbine emissions with a higher operability turndown ratio. The recent developments and challenges toward the application of hydrogen gas turbines are introduced.

Automated summary

This article reviews the combustion technologies for reducing emissions and improving fuel economy in industrial gas turbines. It introduces low-temperature combustion techniques and methods for controlling NOx emissions. The challenges faced by current combustion technologies are discussed, and improved designs and strategies are proposed to overcome these challenges.