Proceedings of ASME Turbo Expo 2013: Turbine Technical Conference and Exposition

GT2013
June 3-7, 2013, San Antonio, Texas, USA

GT2013-95761

SPRAY CHARACTERISTICS OF FISCHER-TROPSCH ALTERNATE JET FUELS

Kumaran Kannaiyan, Reza Sadr*

Assistant Research Scientist, Assistant Professor,
Micro-Scale Thermo Fluids Laboratory Micro-Scale Thermo Fluids Laboratory
Texas A&M University at Qatar, Doha, Qatar Texas A&M University at Qatar, Doha, Qatar

ABSTRACT
Increase in energy demand and stringent emission norms drive
the need for clean, alternative energy source. Recently, gas-to-
liquid (GTL), a synthetic jet fuel produced from natural gas
using Fischer-Tropsch synthesis has grabbed global attention
due to its cleaner combustion aspects when compared to the
conventional jet fuel. The chemical and physical properties of
GTL fuels are different from the conventional fuels which
could potentially affect the atomization and in turn the
combustion characteristics and pollutant formation. In this
work the spray characteristics of two GTL blends and
conventional Jet A-1 fuels are investigated downstream of a
pressure swirl nozzle exit at two injection pressures and the
results are then compared. Microscopic spray characteristics,
droplet size and velocity distributions are obtained at global as
well as local levels of the spray using global sizing velocimetry
and phase Doppler anemometry measurement techniques,
respectively. Results clearly show that although the GTL fuels
have different physical properties, such as viscosity, density,
and surface tension the spray characteristics of the GTL fuels
are found to be similar to those of Jet A-1 fuel.
1. NOMENCLATURE
GTL Gas-to-Liquid
RME Rapeseed methyl ester
SPK Synthetic Paraffinic kerosene
GSV Global Sizing Velocimetry
PDA Phase Doppler Anemometry
F-T Fischer-Tropsch
H/C ratio Hydrogen to Carbon ratio
CCD Charge-Coupled Device
SMD Sauter mean diameter
NS Nozzle station
2. INTRODUCTION
Increasing concern on the supply security and high cost of
the petroleum based fuels and strict emission policies drive the
need for cleaner, alternate fuel for the transportation sector [1].
The synthetic fuels derived from feed-stocks, such as biomass,
natural gas, and coal are being considered as a viable
alternative fuel for transportation, without any modifications to
the existing fuel injection system and combustor design. It is
expected that consumption of the synthetic fuels increases to
25% of the total fuel consumption in the transportation sector in
the near future in spite of the current limitation in the
production capacity of these fuels at commercial scale [2].
There has been an increased interest in gas-to-liquid (GTL)
synthetic paraffinic kerosene (SPK) fuel derived from natural
gas using Fischer-Tropsch process for diesel and gas turbine
engines due to its cleaner combustion aspects owing to the near
absence of aromatic and sulphur content in the fuel
composition. However, the alternative fuels are expected to
meet the vital qualities such as quick atomization, vaporization,
combustion and emission characteristics of conventional fuel in
order to qualify as a drop-in fuel in the current aviation gas
turbines.
The chemical composition of GTL fuel produced from F-T
synthesis is mainly composed of paraffins (iso- and normal-
paraffins). This composition alters the physical and chemical
properties, such as density, viscosity, surface tension, H/C ratio,
and aromatics content of GTL fuel from those of the
conventional jet fuel. Many studies are carried out recently to
investigate the effect of the change in chemical and physical
properties of GTL fuel on the combustion and emission in
diesel [3] [4] as well as gas turbine [5] [6] engines. On the other
hand, any change in the physical properties of the fuels affects
its macro- and micro-spray characteristics, which eventually
affect the combustion and emission process in the combustor.
This could have significant impact on the pollutant formation,
life, durability and efficiency of the combustor [7]. Hence, it is
essential to have a better understanding of the fuel spray
characteristics that influences the quality of air-fuel mixture
inside the combustor and in turn the combustion and emission
processes.

*Corresponding author: reza.sadr@qatar.tamu.edu 1 Copyright © 2013 by ASME

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 extraction duct, a 2D nozzle traversing mechanism at rear side, symmetric about the nozzle axis. The spray characteristics, such
and the optical rails and mounts for the CCD camera as droplet size distribution and velocity are measured at two
(PCO.1600) in the front side. The spray measurement chamber nozzle injection pressures of 0.3MPa and 0.9MPa. The fuel
(0.6m x 0.6m x 1.2m) is made of a transparent, acrylic glass for injection pressures considered in this work represent the
optical access. A pilot scale, pressure swirl nozzle (proprietary pressure differentials encountered in the gas turbine engine at
of Rolls-Royce, UK) having an exit diameter of 1mm is used in different stages of an aircraft flight cycle.
this study and the nozzle exit is positioned vertically
downwards at the middle of the spray chamber via the 2D 3.2 FUEL DETAILS
traverse mechanism. The traverse setup facilitates the Properties SPK-1 SPK-2 Jet A-1
movement of spray enabling the measurement of different Density (kg/m3) 737.5 749.0 788.1
sections of the spray without disturbing the optical alignment. Viscosity at -20C 2.552 3.237 3.424
The spray chamber is continuously purged with nitrogen at very (cSt)
low flow rate through the hood at the top to make an inert Iso-paraffins 55.70 64.81 NA
environment at atmospheric condition. Nitrogen supply hood (% Wt)
and the nozzle exit have a clearance of about 350mm to ensure Normal paraffins 43.40 29.79 NA
(% wt)
that the nitrogen supply does not influence the spray structure.
Napthenes 0.5 5.4 NA
The nitrogen and fuel vapor are extracted continuously through (% Wt)
an exhaust duct to avoid vapor saturation inside the chamber Surface tension 23.53 23.95 26.8
and the liquid fuel is collected at the bottom of the spray (mN/m)
chamber. Carbon cut narrow wide Not
C7-C13 C7-C16 available
Distillation characteristics
T50-T10 (oC) 8.4 9.4 >20
T90-T10 (oC) 20.7 28.7 >40
Table 1 Physical and Chemical properties of the jet fuels
[13]

Figure 2. Field of view and the measurement locations for
the GSV and PDA techniques
Two different measurement techniques of Global Sizing
Velocimetry (GSV) and Phase Doppler Anemometry (PDA) are
used to map droplet diameters in the spray. Figure 2 shows the
schematic of the spray and field of view for the planar GSV
measurement technique and the black dots represent the PDA
measurement locations.
Measurements are carried out in the near nozzle region up
to 123mm downstream of the nozzle exit. The region of interest
is divided into two zones, nozzle station-1 (NS1) and nozzle
station-2 (NS2) as shown in Figure 2. For GSV measurements
these regions (field of view) are constructed based on the focal
length of the camera lens and the chamber dimensions. The
field of view has a width of 55mm and a height of 41mm. The
region of interest in the radial direction is covered in two steps,
each step having a dimension of the field of view as mentioned
above. For PDA measurements data is obtained at the points in
the midsection of NS1 and NS2 as shown in the figure. All the
zones are positioned on one side of the spray, since the spray is
The GTL and conventional Jet A-1 fuels used in this work
are supplied by Shell Inc., and the chemical composition and
property details are summarized in Table 1. The SPK-1
represents the Shell commercial GTL fuel and SPK-2 is a blend
of SPK-1 and ShellSol solvents. The fuel composition of SPK-2
mimics the composition of future commercial GTL fuel from
“Qatar-Pearl” from a pilot plant sample from Shell. The key
difference in chemical composition between SPK-1 and SPK-2
is the carbon range, the former has the narrow carbon range and
the latter has the wide carbon range. Despite the difference in
carbon range, the overall hydrogen to carbon ratio is almost the
same among the GTL fuels. The change in chemical properties
has resulted in an increase in viscosity, density, and surface
tension of SPK-2 by 27%, 2%, and 1.8%, respectively, when
compared to SPK-1. Furthermore, the surface tension of Jet A-1
is higher than SPK-1 and SPK-2 by 12% and 11%, respectively.
An in depth analysis of the compositional details is reported
elsewhere [13].
3.3 OPTICAL DIAGNOSTICS
In this study, the droplet size and velocity in the spray are
measured at planar (global) and point (local) level using Global
Sizing Velocimetry (GSV) and Phase Doppler Anemometry
(PDA), respectively. Details of the measurement techniques are
discussed next.
3.3.1 GLOBAL SIZING VELOCIMETRY
GSV (TSI Inc.,) is a planar, laser-based imaging technique
working on the interferometric principle [14]. A Quantel,

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 Figure 5 Schematic of the mono-disperse droplet generator
[19]
In the present work water is used in MDG-100 system to
study the operational performance of both GSV and PDA
measurement techniques. GSV and PDA systems are used with
a combination of six and eight different droplet sizes,
respectively. Figure 6 shows that the measured droplet
diameters are within 15% of the theoretical values for the
system in both the cases. The repeatability of the experiments is
found to be within ± 3µm. Furthermore, Figure 6 shows that the
GSV and PDA calibration results agree very well with each
other.
Figure 6 Comparison of mean droplet diameters measured
by GSV and PDA techniques
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 GLOBAL MEASUREMENTS
In this section the results obtained using planar
measurement technique, GSV at different injection pressures
and axial locations of the spray are presented and discussed.
The GSV results are obtained by capturing 400 images from
which a total of 12,000 to 18,000 droplets are detected for each
condition studied. Figure 7 shows the comparison of droplet
size distribution measured for SPK-1, SPK-2 and Jet A-1 fuels
at Nozzle station, NS1.
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Figure 7 Comparison of droplet size distribution of GTL
and Jet A-1 fuels measured at (a) 0.3MPa and (b) 0.9MPa
injection pressures at Nozzle station, NS1
The size distributions are shown only up to 300µm beyond
which the difference in distributions is insignificant. On the
lower side, all the distribution curves start from around 30µm.
This value represents the minimum droplet size that could be
measured with GSV as a result of the camera aperture size and
the defocus distance used in this work. At low injection
pressure, 0.3MPa, some difference is observed near the
distribution peak region, 50µm < d < 125µm. The distribution
peak for Jet A-1 is found to be higher and occurs at a smaller
droplet diameter when compared to those of SPK-1 and SPK-2
fuels. The distribution peak among the GTL fuels are almost the
same. Beyond 75 µm, the SPK-1 distribution is similar to that
of the Jet A-1 fuel. Interestingly, the SPK-2 exhibits a small
second peak at around 110µm which is not seen in the other
cases. Nonetheless, all these differences are within the accuracy
of the GSV experiments mentioned earlier in section 3.3.3. At
the high injection pressure the overall distributions and the
distribution peak exhibit almost similar pattern among the fuels.
In all the cases, the distribution peak is found to be slightly
higher when compared to the low injection pressure case.
Figure 8 shows the comparison of size distributions among
the fuels at nozzle station, NS2 at low and high injection
pressures. The size distribution trends for all the fuels at NS2
are similar to that observed at nozzle station, NS1. The
distribution peaks for all the fuels at NS2 are slightly higher
than those of NS1. At higher injection pressure, there is no
effect of axial distance (from the nozzle exit) on the size
distribution. This is despite the fact that the viscosity of Jet A-1
is higher than SPK-1 and SPK-2 by about 26% and 6%,
respectively and density by about 6% and 5%, respectively.
5 Copyright © 2013 by ASME
 typical standard deviation of the measured SMD and is only
shown for SPK-2 due to the narrow spread of the data and to
facilitate the discussion. At both pressures, the trend is found to
be prominent with increase in axial distance.
Figure 11 shows the variation of SMD along the axial
direction of the spray at the radial location, r = 0. It is seen that
with the increase in axial distance the SMD increases for all the
fuels. This increase in SMD could be due to the coalescence of
the droplets along the axial direction as reported by Ruger et
al., [24]. Among the GTL fuels, the SPK-2 shows the maximum
increase in SMD with axial distance while Jet A-1 exhibits the
least increase in SMD. With the increase in injection pressure,
the increase in SMD along the axial direction is found to be
less.

Figure 12 Radial variation of the mean axial velocity at (a)

NS1-midsection and (b) NS2-midsection

Figure 11 Variation of SMD along the axial direction of

spray at r=0

The distribution of mean axial velocity along the radial

direction of the spray at the midsection of NS1 and NS2 at
different injection pressures is shown in Figure 12. At low
injection pressure, the mean axial velocity increases
continuously along the radial direction and with an increase in
axial distance the increase in the mean axial velocity flattens
out. However, with increase in injection pressure the axial
velocity peaks at a radial location around r=40mm and the peak
shifted to r=70mm with an increase in axial distance. The steep
decay of axial velocity from the spray periphery to the spray
core could be due to the presence of a vortex zone as evidenced
by the Santolaya et al., [21]. They further reported that at low
injection pressures, the axial velocity is affected by the liquid
sheet break-up length and the entrainment of the ambient gas
due to the swirl motion. Furthermore, the axial velocity decays
with axial distance from the nozzle exit as expected and is
shown in Figure 13.
The point wise measurement results also indicate that the
difference in droplet size and droplet velocity among the fuels
is insignificant although the difference in fuel physical
properties (density, viscosity, and surface tension) between
GTL and Jet A-1 are to a maximum of 6%, 26%, and 12%,
respectively.
Figure 13 Axial variation of the axial velocity at different
injection pressures at r = 0
It is not clear at this point either aerodynamic or surface
tension force, on the droplets, is dominant in the spray regions
investigated here. Variation of Weber number, the ratio of
aerodynamic force to the surface tension force ( ∗ ∗
/ ), is also investigated to identify the dominant forces in the
atomization. Where, ρ is the liquid density in kg/m3, UR is the
relative velocity between the gas environment and the liquid
droplet in m/s. Since the ambient velocity is negligible in this
work the relative velocity is assumed to be equal to the droplet
velocity, UR ≈ UL. L is the characteristic dimension in m (which
is the droplet diameter in the present study), and σ is the surface
tension of the liquid fuel in N/m. Weber number is calculated
using the physical properties of the fuel from Table 1, the mean
droplet diameter (d10), and mean axial velocity from the PDA
measurement at any radial location.

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 number of larger droplets detected at the spray periphery, when
compared to those detected in the spray core region. PDA
measurement in Figure 10 shows that, the smaller droplets are
more concentrated closer to the spray axis and the larger
droplets are pushed towards the spray boundary, a common
trend in pressure swirl nozzles [21]. Consequently, the SMD
calculations are more influenced by the bigger droplets that are
detected at the spray boundary causing the SMD values to be
higher than the estimated ones for GSV measurement. On the
other hand, the overall SMD from the PDA data are found to be
within 17% and 13% for all the fuels at different axial distance
and at 0.3MPa and 0.9MPa, respectively. This is because PDA
measurements are less affected by the aforementioned
shortcoming of GSV and more faithfully follow the expected
trend for a pressure swirl nozzle.
5. SUMMRAY AND CONCLUSIONS
In this work, the microscopic spray characteristics, such as
mean droplet diameter, size distribution and velocities are
measured at several radial and axial locations downstream of
the nozzle exit at two injection pressures. Plane-wise and point-
wise measurements are carried out using Global Sizing
Velocimetry and Phase Doppler Anemometry, respectively, and
the results are compared. The measurement techniques and the
measurement locations are overlapped in order to gain more
insights from both the measurements.
The results from the plane-wise measurement clearly show
that although the physical properties of the GTL fuels differ
from the conventional fuel by a maximum of 26%, the spray
characteristics are similar between the GTL fuels and close to
that of the Jet A-1. The difference in the calculated SMD
between Jet A-1 and GTL fuels obtained from GSV
measurement are found to be insignificant. However, the
measured SMD values are found to be higher than the
estimated value obtained using an empirical correlation
available in the literature. This is mainly caused by the
characteristics of the GSV technique used for the measurement
of droplet diameters in the spray.
The results of the PDA measurement also show little
difference between the spray characteristics of the GTL and Jet
A-1 fuels. Point-wise measurement results add more insights by
providing the radial distribution of the droplet size and velocity
in the fuel spray region. The trend of radial variation of the
droplet size in the spray obtained from PDA measurement is
found to be consistent with the trend previously reported for the
pressure swirl nozzle. Interestingly, the point-wise
measurement results for the GTL and Jet A-1 also lead to the
fact that the GTL fuel spray characteristics are close to that of
the Jet A-1 fuel. The variation of Weber number is also
investigated to investigate the nature of dominant force in the
atomization process.
All the results reported here indicate that the spray
performance of GTL fuels at atmospheric condition is similar to
that of conventional Jet A-1 fuel. This is an indication that GTL
fuel may be used in the existing fuel systems and combustors
without compromising the spray quality, and at the same time
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improving the combustion and emission characteristics of the
combustor. However, more studies at ambient conditions closer
to actual combustors is required to properly account for
volatilization characteristics and chemical processes relevant to
combustion.
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank the Qatar Science and
Technology Park for funding this work. The authors would like
to acknowledge the project partners, Mr. John Moran at Rolls-
Royce (UK), Prof. Chris Wilson at Sheffield University, Dr.
Patrick LeClercq at DLR (Germany), and Dr. Joanna Bauldreay
and Mr. Ali Al-Sharshani at Shell (UK and Qatar) for their
support. We would like to thank Dr. Mahesh Panchagnula at IIT
Madras for his valuable suggestions.
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