The atmospheric test campaign was performed at the facility of The atmospheric test campaign was performed at the facility of CENTRO COMBUSTIONE AMBIENTE S.R.L. in Bari, Italy with participation from Thomassen Energy BV , the Netherlands. Atmospheric combustion testing plays an essential role in the design process to assess the behavior of hydrogen-based fuels under conditions that are pressure-scaled to replicate those encountered in actual gas turbine operation. While performed at ambient pressure, these tests are designed to capture representative flame behavior and combustion dynamics, improving a better understanding on the performance and stability of fuel-flexible combustor technologies such as the FlameSheet system developed by Thomassen Energy BV.
During the atmospheric testing of Thomassen Energy’s FlameSheet™ combustor at the Centro Combustione Ambiente, the latest prototypes were assessed for thermoacoustic performance, flashback resistance, and emissions at hydrogen levels ranging from 0% to 100%. Significant improvements in all areas have been demonstrated.
A key highlight is the use of an innovative methodology to investigate flame instability phenomena. This hardware and software methodology is based on high-speed imaging and image processing as shown in Figure 1.CENTRO COMBUSTIONE AMBIENTE S.R.L. in Bari, Italy with participation from Thomassen Energy BV , the Netherlands. Atmospheric combustion testing plays an essential role in the design process to assess the behavior of hydrogen-based fuels under conditions that are pressure-scaled to replicate those encountered in actual gas turbine operation. While performed at ambient pressure, these tests are designed to capture representative flame behavior and combustion dynamics, improving a better understanding on the performance and stability of fuel-flexible combustor technologies such as the FlameSheet system developed by Thomassen Energy BV.
During the atmospheric testing of Thomassen Energy’s FlameSheet™ combustor at the Centro Combustione Ambiente, the latest prototypes were assessed for thermoacoustic performance, flashback resistance, and emissions at hydrogen levels ranging from 0% to 100%. Significant improvements in all areas have been demonstrated.
A key highlight is the use of an innovative methodology to investigate flame instability phenomena. This hardware and software methodology is based on high-speed imaging and image processing as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Real time imaging with continous flame monitoring (back) and an instability analysis
It allows the localisation of instability phenomena generated by combustion, manifested as pressure fluctuations in the combustor. Pressure fluctuations generate local variations in the flow rate of oxidant and fuel, resulting in fluctuations in stoichiometry; these in turn produce fluctuations in heat release. In lean premixed combustion of gas turbines, part of the energy released by the oxidation reaction is produced in the form of light radiation, the chemiluminescence. Our partner CCA has developed this methodology into an online diagnostic tool to be used during the course of the experiment.
The true innovation of this methodology is that the image analysis results are real-time, not a post-processing procedure, and are available while combustion tests are being performed. This was made possible by using a GPU as the computational centre and leveraging GPUs’ fast calculations through parallel processing, where they break down large tasks into smaller parts that are processed simultaneously across tens of cores. This is particularly effective for tasks that involve repetitive mathematical operations on large data sets, as in this case, such as graphics rendering, scientific simulations, and machine learning.
The methodology developed by CCA is proving to be particularly useful in the presence of high fuel staging, allowing the determination of any oscillation modes specific to each gas supply line, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Determination of oscillation modes specific to each gas supply
Overlaying the false-colour map with an image of the combustor allow identification of the oscillation modes of the light intensity emitted by chemiluminescence. The red color corresponds to the points where the oscillation amplitude is highest, while the blue points represent oscillations with lower amplitudes. The graphs below are the average FFTs of the light signals detected by each pixel of the camera.
The success of this test campaign of Thomassen Energy B.V. and CCA was only possible thanks to the highly committed team and the great cooperation with all the HELIOS consortium partners Eindhoven University of Technology, Delft University of Technology , German Aerospace Center (DLR), Thomassen Energy BV, CENTRO COMBUSTIONE AMBIENTE S.R.L.
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