The investigation of fuel effects on industrial gas turbine combustor using openFOAM

Abstract

To investigate the effect of fuel type on gas turbine combustor performance, a reacting solver using flamelet combustion model is developed on open source CFD code OpenFOAM. The flow field of an industrial gas turbine combustor under three different power setting conditions including 20%, 58% and 100% is simulated with the new solver. The major features of the flow field with two different fuels are analyzed. Furthermore, the main performance parameters of the combustor are discussed. The results indicate that the major features of velocity and temperature distribution using nature gas remains unchanged, in comparison with using the diesel oil. The natural gas fueled case produces more water in the whole combustion zone than the diesel oil case at the same power setting. However the combustion efficiency and total pressure recovery coefficient are both improved. Thus, the outlet temperature distributes more uniformly using the natural gas.