Experimental investigation on alternative fuel combustion performance using a gas turbine combustor

In order to ensure reliable combustion performance and low emissions profiles for prospective alternative fuels, this study was conducted in order to evaluate the impact of fuel properties and their composition on lean blowout performance and emission characteristics of various fuels. Significant contributions to knowledge have been achieved using visual images of the flames at the occurrence of lean blowout (LBO) that were captured by a high-speed camera and analysed to develop a new model for the evaluation of the LBO of current and future alternative fuels. The results show that high-density and high aromatic content fuel has the potential to produce higher soot formation. In addition, a low lean blowout equivalence ratio and low soot propensity is unlikely to be achieved at the same time by simply altering the value of fuel properties. It was discovered that the Derived Cetane number was observed to have a considerable effect on improving the LBO performance without inducing heavier soot emissions. An analysis of the impact of the fuel aromatic content (type and proportion) presents a hypothesis that not all aromatics species produce the same levels of particulate matter emissions. This work provides a comprehensive data foundation, analytical concepts and potential research techniques for the application of expeditious fuel screening tools to assess the combustion behaviour of current fuels, and also facilitates the potential for further operational fuel development. The visualisation method used in this work could contribute towards developing applications for flame detection in fuel performance assessment