Advanced Turbulent Combustion Modeling For Gas Turbine Application

In spite of the increasing presence of renewable energy sources, fossil fuels will remain the primary supply of the world's energy needs for the upcoming future. Modern gas-turbine based systems represent one of the most efficient large-scale power generation technology currently available. Alongside this, gas-turbine power plants operate with very low emissions, have flexible operational characteristics and are able to utilize a broad range of fuels. It is expected that gas-turbine based plants will play an important role as an effective means of converting combustion energy in the future as well, because of the vast potential energy savings. The numerical approach to the design of complex systems such as gas-turbines has gained a continuous growth of interest in the last few decades. This because simulations are foreseen to provide a tremendous increase in the combustor efficiency, fuel-flexibility and quality over the next future. In this dissertation, an advanced turbulent combustion technique is implemented and progressively developed for the simulation of all the features that are typically observed in stationary gas-turbine combustion, including hydrogen as a fuel. The developed turbulent combustion model retains most of the accuracy of a detailed simulation while drastically reducing its computational time. As a result of this work, the advancement of power generation plants can be accelerated, paving the way for future developments of alternative fuel usage in a cleaner and more efficient combustion.

Explore a thorough overview of the current knowledge, developments and outstanding challenges in turbulent combustion and application.

With regard to both the environmental sustainability and operating efficiency demands, modern combustion research has to face two main objectives, the optimization of combustion efficiency and the reduction of pollutants. This book reports on the combustion research activities carried out within the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 568 “Flow and Combustion in Future Gas Turbine Combustion Chambers” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). This aimed at designing a completely integrated modeling and numerical simulation of the occurring very complex, coupled and interacting physico-chemical processes, such as turbulent heat and mass transport, single or multi-phase flows phenomena, chemical reactions/combustion and radiation, able to support the development of advanced gas turbine chamber concepts

This book presents a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art models for turbulent combustion, with special emphasis on the theory, development and applications of combustion models in practical combustion systems. It simplifies the complex multi-scale and nonlinear interaction between chemistry and turbulence to allow a broader audience to understand the modeling and numerical simulations of turbulent combustion, which remains at the forefront of research due to its industrial relevance. Further, the book provides a holistic view by covering a diverse range of basic and advanced topics—from the fundamentals of turbulence–chemistry interactions, role of high-performance computing in combustion simulations, and optimization and reduction techniques for chemical kinetics, to state-of-the-art modeling strategies for turbulent premixed and nonpremixed combustion and their applications in engineering contexts.

Turbulent combustion sits at the interface of two important nonlinear, multiscale phenomena: chemistry and turbulence. Its study is extremely timely in view of the need to develop new combustion technologies in order to address challenges associated with climate change, energy source uncertainty, and air pollution. Despite the fact that modeling of turbulent combustion is a subject that has been researched for a number of years, its complexity implies that key issues are still eluding, and a theoretical description that is accurate enough to make turbulent combustion models rigorous and quantitative for industrial use is still lacking. In this book, prominent experts review most of the available approaches in modeling turbulent combustion, with particular focus on the exploding increase in computational resources that has allowed the simulation of increasingly detailed phenomena. The relevant algorithms are presented, the theoretical methods are explained, and various application examples are given. The book is intended for a relatively broad audience, including seasoned researchers and graduate students in engineering, applied mathematics and computational science, engine designers and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) practitioners, scientists at funding agencies, and anyone wishing to understand the state-of-the-art and the future directions of this scientifically challenging and practically important field.

This book addresses nearly all aspects of the state of the art in LES & DNS of turbulent flows, ranging from flows in biological systems and the environment to external aerodynamics, domestic and centralized energy production, combustion, propulsion as well as applications of industrial interest. Following the advances in increased computational power and efficiency, several contributions are devoted to LES & DNS of challenging applications, mainly in the area of turbomachinery, including flame modeling, combustion processes and aeroacoustics. The book includes work presented at the tenth Workshop on 'Direct and Large-Eddy Simulation' (DLES-10), which was hosted in Cyprus by the University of Cyprus, from May 27 to 29, 2015. The goal of the workshop was to establish a state of the art in DNS, LES and related techniques for the computation and modeling of turbulent and transitional flows. The book is of interest to scientists and engineers, both in the early stages of their career and at a more senior level.

Although many books have been written on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and many written on combustion, most contain very limited coverage of the combination of CFD and industrial combustion. Furthermore, most of these books are written at an advanced academic level, emphasize theory over practice, and provide little help to engineers who need to use CFD for combustion modeling. Computational Fluid Dynamics in Industrial Combustion fills this gap in the literature. Focusing on topics of interest to the practicing engineer, it codifies the many relevant books, papers, and reports written on this combined subject into a single, coherent reference. It looks at each topic from a somewhat narrow perspective to see how that topic affects modeling in industrial combustion. The editor and his team of expert authors address these topics within three main sections: Modeling Techniques-The basics of CFD modeling in combustion Industrial Applications-Specific applications of CFD in the steel, aluminum, glass, gas turbine, and petrochemical industries Advanced Techniques-Subjects rarely addressed in other texts, including design optimization, simulation, and visualization Rapid increases in computing power and significant advances in commercial CFD codes have led to a tremendous increase in the application of CFD to industrial combustion. Thorough and clearly representing the techniques and issues confronted in industry, Computational Fluid Dynamics in Industrial Combustion will help bring you quickly up to date on current methods and gain the ability to set up and solve the various types of problems you will encounter.

This book reflects the outcome of the 1st International Workshop on Turbulent Spray Combustion held in 2009 in Corsica (France). The focus is on reporting the progress of experimental and numerical techniques in two-phase flows, with emphasis on spray combustion. The motivation for studies in this area is that knowledge of the dominant phenomena and their interactions in such flow systems is essential for the development of predictive models and their use in combustor and gas turbine design. This necessitates the development of accurate experimental methods and numerical modelling techniques. The workshop aimed at providing an opportunity for experts and young researchers to present the state-of-the-art, discuss new developments or techniques and exchange ideas in the areas of experimentations, modelling and simulation of reactive multiphase flows. The first two papers reflect the contents of the invited lectures, given by experts in the field of turbulent spray combustion. The first concerns computational issues, while the second deals with experiments. These lectures initiated very interesting and interactive discussions among the researchers, further pursued in contributed poster presentations. Contributions 3 and 4 focus on some aspects of the impact of the interaction between fuel evaporation and combustion on spray combustion in the context of gas turbines, while the final article deals with the interaction between evaporation and turbulence.