Stability limits and NO emissions of premixed swirl ammonia-air flames enriched with hydrogen or methane at elevated pressures

Abdulrahman A. Khateeb, Thibault Guiberti, Guoqing Wang, Wesley Boyette, Mourad Younes, Aqil Jamal, William L. Roberts

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

130 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study reports measurements of stability limits and exhaust NO mole fractions of technically-premixed swirl ammonia-air flames enriched with either methane or hydrogen. Experiments were conducted at different pressures from atmospheric to 5 bar, representative of commercial micro gas turbines. The full range of ammonia fractions in the fuel blend, xNH3, was considered, from 0 (pure methane or hydrogen) to 1 (pure ammonia), covering very lean (φ = 0.25) to rich (φ = 1.60) equivalence ratios. Results show that increasing pressure widens the range of stable equivalence ratios for pure ammonia-air flames. Regardless of pressure, there is a critical ammonia fraction above which the range of stable equivalence ratios suddenly widens. This is because flashback does not occur anymore when the equivalence ratio is progressively increased towards stoichiometric and rich blowout occurs instead. This critical ammonia fraction increases with pressure and is larger for ammonia-hydrogen than for ammonia-methane. Provided that enough hydrogen is blended with ammonia (xNH3 < 0.9), flames with very lean equivalence ratios (φ < 0.7) can be stabilized and these yield competitively low NO emissions (
Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalInternational Journal of Hydrogen Energy
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2021

Bibliographical note

KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2021-02-16
Acknowledged KAUST grant number(s): BAS/1/1370-01-01
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Saudi Aramco research and development center for funding this project under research agreement number RGC/3/3837-01-01 and to the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under grant number BAS/1/1370-01-01.

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