Natural Gas-Oxygen Combustion in a Super-Critical Carbon Dioxide Gas Turbine Combustor

Abstract

The paper presents results for chemical kinetics of combustion process in the combustor of oxy-fuel cycle super-critical carbon dioxide gas turbine based on the Allam thermodynamic cycle. The work shows deviation of the normal flame propagation velocity for the case of transition from the traditional natural gas combustion in the N2 diluent environment to the combustion at super-high pressure up to 300 bar in CO2 diluent. The chemical kinetics parametric study involved the Chemkin code with the GRI-Mesh 3.0 kinetic mechanism. This mechanism provides good correspondence between calculation results and test data. The CO2 and N2 diluents temperature, pressure and contents influence the flame propagation velocity and the chemical kinetics parameters in the two gas turbine types. It is demonstrated that the CO2 diluent slows down chemical reactions stronger than the N2 one. The flame propagation velocity in carbon dioxide is four time smaller than in the N2 one. In the oxy-fuel cycle combustor a pressure increase reduces the flame propagation velocity. Increase of the CO2 content from 60 to 79% reduces the flame propagation velocity for 65% at atmospheric pressure and for 94% at super-critical pressure. An increase of the combustor inlet mixture temperature from 300 to 1100 K at super-critical pressure causes the flame propagation velocity increase for 94%. The flame propagation velocities compatible with the traditional gas turbines may be reached at the CO2 diluent content of the O2 + CO2 mixture in the active combustion zone must be below 50%.