EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION ON

FLAMELESS COMBUSTION OF GAS TURBINES

Submitted by:
Rishav Singh (23PME020)

M Tech, 2nd Semester

Automotive Engineering
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
AGARTALA - 799046,INDIA
MAY -2024
EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION ON FLAMELESS
COMBUSTION FOR GAS TURBINES

Report submitted to
National Institute of Technology, Agartala
For the project preliminary

Of

Master of Technology

Rishav Singh

(Enrolment No:23PME020)

Supervisor
Dr. Durbadal Debroy

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
MAY 2024
 APPROVAL SHEET

This dissertation entitled “Experimental Investigation on Flameless combustion of gas

turbine” by Rishav Singh is approved for the degree of Master of Technology in Mechanical
Engineering ,specialization in Automotive engineering

Supervisor External Examiner Chairman

DPPC (Head of Department)

Board of Examiners
1.
3.
3.
4.
5.
 CERTIFICATE

It is certified that the work contained in the M. Tech. project titled

“Experimental Investigation on Flameless Combustion for Gas Turbines ” by

“Rishav Singh” has been carried out under my supervision and that this

work has not been submitted elsewhere for a degree.

Signature of Supervisor

Dr. Durbadal Debroy

Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
N.I.T. Agartala
May, 2024
 DECLARATION

I declare that this written submission represents my ideas in my own

words and where others' ideas or words have been included, I have
adequately cited and referenced the original sources. I also declare that I
have adhered to all principles of academic honesty and integrity and have
not misrepresented or fabricated or falsified any idea/data/fact/source in
my submission. I understand that any violation of the above will be cause
for disciplinary action by the Institute and can also evoke penal action
from the sources which have thus not been properly cited or from whom
proper permission has not been taken when needed.

(Signature)
Rishav Singh
(Name of the student)
23PME020
(Roll No.)

Date: 09-05-2024

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Almighty for enabling

me to complete this report on the “Experimental Investigation on Flameless
Combustion for Gas Turbines”. I convey my gratitude to my Academic
Supervisor, Dr. Durbadal Debroy, Assistant Prof. of Mechanical
Engineering Department, NIT Agartala. Without his kind direction and
proper guidance this study would have been a little success. In every phase
of this project his supervision and guidance shaped this report to be
completed perfectly.

Successful completion of any project requires help from number of persons.

I have also taken help from different people for the preparation of the
report. Hence, I would also like to thank my parents, friends and family
members who helped me a lot in finalizing this report within the limited
time frame.

Rishav Singh

(Name of student)

23PME020

(Roll No.)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Sl. No. Topics Page No.

1. Chapter - 1 1
1.1 Highlights 2
1.3 Introduction 4
2. Chapter - 2 5
2.1 Literature Review 6
2.1.1 V. Mahendra Reddy et al 8
2.1.2 Saurabh Sharma et al 10

2.1.3 Saurabh Sharma et al 12

2.2 Discussion on Literature 14
3. Chapter - 3 15
3.1 Future work 16
4. References 17

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CHAPTER 1

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 HIGHLIGHTS

 Flameless Combustion improves performance and emissions.

 Eminent reduction in CO and NOx emissions

 Flameless Combustion achieved by recirculation of hot combustion products into

fresh incoming mixtures

 Significant increase in uniformity of temperature dissipation.

 Different dilutions and tests conducted on the flameless combustor.

 Prominent improvement in thermal efficiency in observed.

 Flameless combustor plays a vital role in catering environmental regulations.

 The improvements for a flameless combustor have been proposed.

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 INTRODUCTION

Conventional combustion systems are associated with higher pollutant emissions (NOx) due to higher
operating temperatures. NOx emission from combustion systems causes harmful effects like acid rains
and smog which leads to adverse health effects. Therefore, it is extremely important to explore and
develop newer combustion techniques with lower pollutant emissions. MILD/ flameless combustion has
been reported to have several promising features of very low NOx and CO emissions along with a
significant increase in uniformity of the temperature distribution in furnaces, leading to increase in
thermal efficiency and increased life of various combustor components. In this mode, hot combustion
products are recirculated into the fresh incoming mixture. This dilution slows down the reaction rate and
results in uniform thermal field and volumetric reaction zone inside the combustor .The characteristics of
flameless combustion have been extensively studied and investigated for gaseous fuels by various
researchers . Plessing et al. , Ozdemir and Peters have studied the effect of recirculation of hot combustion
products and highly preheated air to achieve flameless combustion mode in a reverse flow furnace
configuration. Their experimental investigations showed a lower temperature rise even at high air
preheating conditions, comparing closely with that of well-stirred reactors. A new burner operating in
mild combustion mode was developed by Kumar et al. using geometrical optimization through numerical
and experimental studies (frustum of a cone) to increase the recirculation of hot combustion products
inside the combustor. They were able to achieve mild combustion conditions at higher heat release
intensities (10 MW/m3 ). Effective recirculation of hot combustion products along with volume-fraction
of temperature and oxidizer concentration in the combustor were shown to play a major role in achieving
the flameless combustion. In a different approach to achieve MILD combustion, Dally et al. proposed that
MILD combustion conditions can be achieved by diluting the fuel-air mixture with CO2 and N2 gases and
investigated the combustion characteristics in MILD combustion mode with various dilution gases. They
showed a significant scope for emission reduction through dilution of the fuel-air mixtures without
increasing the jet momentum. Verissimo et al. have investigated the effect of air jet velocity on the
combustion parameters by reducing the air injection diameter. High-speed air jet velocity led to increased
entrainment of hot combustion products, shown through laser based OH⁄ measurements in the combustion
zone

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CHAPTER 2

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LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents a review of the existing literature on flameless combustion and its
application to industrial furnaces, burners, and gas turbines. Initially, flameless combustion of
gaseous and liquid fuels along with various parametric studies is reported. In the later section of
this chapter, difficulties in achieving flameless combustion within an existing gas turbine
combustor are discussed. Finally, the significance of the increased internal recirculation inside
the combustor to establish flameless combustion is presented, and its role is brought out. The
combustion community is continuously working on developing newer techniques and improving
the efficiency of land-based gas turbine systems, aircraft engines, and industrial Combustion
systems. In parallel, researchers are addressing the challenges of reduction in pollutant emissions
due to new environmental regulations for reducing emissions from such systems. Currently,
fossil fuels are commonly used in gas turbines due to the lack of suitable alternatives, primarily
due to low energy densities of other power sources such as batteries. These fossil fuels emit
harmful emissions during their combustion in various systems. These emissions (CO2, CO, NOx,
and UHC) are major sources of various worldwide problems such as global warming, the
formation of smog, acid rains, and other health hazards. They affect the environment in the near-
earth and upper troposphere. Due to these issues, the emission norms are expected to become
stricter in the near future

Flightpath’s 2050; a report published by the advisory council for aeronautics research in Europe
(ACARE) proposes that the NOx emissions from aviation engines should be reduced by 90% and
the noise of the flying aircraft be reduced by 65% by 2050 compared to a typical aircraft flying in
2000. It will be challenging to achieve these emission targets unless newer technologies are
developed and implemented to bring a better compromise between high combustion efficiency
and lower emissions. A few emission reduction techniques, such as lean direct injection , trapped
vortex combustor, and flameless oxidation have been investigated for their application in gas
turbines. The first two concepts are incapable of maintaining high overall efficiencies while
keeping 10 ultra-low levels of emissions. MILD combustion has been reported to have several
promising features of very low CO and NOx emissions along with a significant increase in the
uniformity of temperature distribution leading to an increase in the thermal efficiency, and life of
the combustion system components due to reduced thermal gradients in the combustion systems .
In MILD/flameless combustion, hot combustion products are recirculated back into the fresh
incoming mixture. The reaction starts as soon as the reactant temperature reaches the
autoignition temperature. The reaction rate is very slow due to higher dilution rates, resulting in a
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distributed reaction zone inside the combustor . Flat thermal field , low pollutant and acoustic
emissions are observed due to the distributed nature of the combustion process. MILD
combustion has also been referred to as flameless oxidation (FLOX®) , high-temperature air
combustion (HiTAC) , colorless distributed combustion and flameless combustion in the
literature

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V. Mahendra Reddy et al

Flameless/Mild combustion has gained significant importance due to its ability to suppress
thermal NO formation and improve thermal efficiency of combustion systems. Flameless
combustion has been primarily identified with gaseous fuels and extensive work has been
reported .Scaling the flameless combustors to higher intensities has been proposed in recent
studies reported in the literature. A brief summary of various high intensity flameless combustion
systems with gaseous fuels is listed in Table 1. Lu¨ckerath et al.have developed a Forward Flow
(FF) combustor configuration with a thermal input of 475 kW and heat intensity of 240 MW/m3
(at 20 bar). Kumar et al. have scaled up a high intensity combustor (5–150 kW thermal input)
with new scaling methodology and compared various existing scaling techniques i.e. Constant
Velocity (CV), Constant Residence Time (CRT) and Cole’s approach with the proposed
technique. The comparison of Weber shows that CRT approach is relatively better for scaling
swirl type combustor configurations. They have hinted at the need of maintaining high reactant
dilution rates to ensure that flameless combustion mode is achieved in scaled combustors. These
types of combustor configurations with high heat intensity are expected to be useful in gas-
turbine applications. Arghode and Gupt have demonstrated a laboratory scale combustor
achieving colorless distributed combustion with a high intensity of 453 MW/m3 (Qth=6.25kW)
with a combustor volume of 13cm3 and Reverse Flow (RF) con figuration. Scaling of these
concepts with low thermal input and high heat intensity render the systems very complex and
making their implementation highly challenging. Further, very little literature is available in the
field of scaling of flameless combustors with liquid fuels. Some basic studies on flameless/mild
combustion with liquid fuels have been reported recently. Traditional industrial burners and
stationary gas-turbine combustors operate with liquid fuels at higher thermal inputs ( 1 MW) and
higher heat intensities (100 MW/m3). Therefore, additional studies are required to investigate the
issues related to the scaling of high intensity flameless combustors with liquid fuels and their
relation with spray characteristics.

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Dimensional details of the combustor

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Saurabh Sharma et al

Pollutants from the combustion of fossil fuels have been a matter of great concern in the last two
decades. These fossil fuels are vital for the operation of gas turbines. Both land-based and
aviation gas turbines emit harmful pollutants such as CO, NO x , HC, and particulate matter
(PM) (Perpignan, Rao, and Roekaerts (2018)). These emissions affect the environ ment in the
near-earth and upper troposphere (Bahr (1992, 1996, 2011)). The emission norms are expected to
become stricter soon as it is targeted to reduce the NO emissions by nearly 90% and noise from
the flying aircraft by 65% compared to the basic design of 2001 (Perpignan, Rao, and Roekaerts
(2018)). x Flameless/MILD (Moderate or intense low oxygen dilution) combustion has been
studied as a possible alternative technique to reduce the harmful emissions from the gas turbines
and industrial furnaces. Flameless combustion is also referred to as flameless oxidation
(Wünning and Wünning (1997)), high-temperature air combustion (HiTaC) (Katsuki and
Hasegawa (1998)), and flameless combustion (Cavaliere and de Joannon (2004). Flameless
combustion is achieved for the specific conditions of the flow and temperature of the reactants.
Flameless combustion was first studied by (Wünning and Wünning (1997)) as flameless
oxidation in industrial furnaces. It is a mixing controlled, non-stabilized mode of combustion,
achieved for the specific flow and temperature condi tions. They observed that the simultaneous
recirculation of heat and combustion products is the key to achieve flameless combustion. Highly
diluted and preheated reactants result in distributed combustion reaction along with reduced peak
temperatures. It is characterized by wider flame stability range, ultra-low NO x combustion
noise. emissions, uniform thermal field, and low Flameless oxidation was investigated as a
perfect stirred reactor by Coelho and Peters (2001, 2001, 1998) for a reverse flow furnace fitted
with FLOX burner. They pointed out the role of increased momentum to achieve flameless
combustion and reduced levels of emissions. It was observed that combustion stabilizes at a far
downstream location if the air momentum is increased leading to a significant reduction in NO x
approach, the effect of fuel dilution by CO 2 and N 2 emissions. In a different on flame structure
and emissions was reported by Dally, Riesmeier, and Peters (2004) using the same furnace of
Plessing, Peters, and Wünning (1998). They concluded that the dilution of the fuel stream by
inert species suppressed the NO x formation and helped achieve flameless combustion mode.
Through a detailed analysis of the mixing process inside the furnace, they concluded that the
slow reaction rate compared to the mixing rate led to the establishment of flameless oxidation in
a combustion system. Dally, Karpetis, and Barlow (2002)and Medwell, Kalt, and Dally (2007)
studied the flame structure in a highly vitiated environment of a JHC (jet in hot coflow) burner

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by varying the coflow oxygen level from 9% to 3 %. Dally, Karpetis, and Barlow (2002) reported
that OH* intensity drops significantly along with the peak tem perature due to reduced O 2 2
concentration. Medwell, Kalt, and Dally (2007) investigated the JHC burner for a range of
Reynolds numbers and oxygen levels. They observed a local flame extinction at a far
downstream location due to air entrainment at such low oxygen levels (3% O 2 ). The burner
deviates from MILD conditions and necessitates the increased mixing in a low O coflow
environment.
Oxy combustion has been investigated as a potential carbon capture technique from various
industrial systems Ghoniem (2011, 2013, 2007). However, this technology faces stability issues
due to low overall temperatures. MILD-oxy combustion solves this issue by simultaneously
increasing the performance along with reduced emissions. MILD-oxy-combustion has been
studied in laboratory furnaces and burners (Krishnamurthy, Paul, and Blasiak (2009, 2013,
2014)). Krishnamurthy, Paul, and Blasiak (2009) studied MILD-oxy combustion in a laboratory
furnace by varying the oxygen- injection position. They reported that asymmetric injection of the
oxidizer jet led to the formation of a large recirculation zone inside the furnace, thus indicating
the occurrence of MILD mode. The flame color was observed to change as the combustion mode
is switched to MILD combustion mode and low NO x emissions along with uniform heat-flux
were measured in the furnace. Li et al. (2013) investigated the MILD-oxy combustion with CO
and N 2 2 dilution for natural gas, liquified petroleum gas, and ethylene in a 13 kW furnace.
They observed a relatively wider combustion regime for CO 2 dilution in contrast to N dilution.
They also concluded that in the lean mixture range, NO x 2 decreases with a slight increase in
temperature, which can not be understood by the thermal NO mechanism

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Saurabh Sharma et al
The combustion community is continuously striving for the im- provement in the efficiency of
land based gas turbine systems, air- craft engines, and industrial combustion systems, while
simultane- ously reducing pollutant emissions to cater to new environmen- tal regulations. These
emissions (CO, NO x , and Unburned hydro- carbons) are major sources of worldwide problems
such as global warming, formation of smog, acid rains, and various health haz- ards. It is
expected that emission norms will become more strin- gent in the near future, with approximately
80% reduction from current levels in the coming decade [1] . Therefore it is extremely important
to explore and develop newer combustion techniques. MILD or flameless combustion has been
reported to have sev- eral promising features, such as very low CO and NO x emissions, along
with a significant increase in uniformity of temperature dis- tribution, leading to increase in
thermal efficiency and life of the combustion system components due to reduced thermal
gradients in the systems [2,3] . MILD combustion is achieved by recircula- tion of hot
combustion products into the fresh incoming mixture, resulting in higher dilution rates and
subsequently, a distributed reaction zone inside the combustor [3] . MILD combustion [3] has
also been referred to as flameless oxidation (FLOX) [2] , high tem- perature air combustion
(HiTAC) [4] , colorless distributed combus- tion [18] and flameless combustion [5] in the
literature. MILD combustion has been thoroughly investigated and char- acterized for gaseous
fuels by various research groups [1-21,36 47] . de Joannon et al . [6] have investigated the
characteristics of MILD combustion for methane fuel in a spherical jet stirred flow reactor.
Plessing et al. [8] studied the effect of recirculation of hot combustion products and preheated air
to achieve flameless com- bustion mode in a reverse flow configuration and compared the
combustion characteristics with a well-stirred reactor. Significant reduction in NO x emissions
was observed in flameless combus- tion regime as compared to turbulent flames. Ozdemir and
Peters [9] studied the flow physics inside a reverse flow furnace, and re- ported that fuel jet
momentum plays a crucial role for enhance- ment of recirculation of combustion products.
Verissimo et al . [10 11] also achieved MILD combustion conditions by increasing the jet
momentum resulting in enhanced recirculation. In a different approach, Dally et al . [12–13]
investigated the role of dilution on MILD combustion of gaseous fuels by CO 2 and N 2 in a
recuperative furnace and found that high fuel jet momentum is not a requisite condition to
achieve the desired recirculation and mixing rates. It was concluded that stable MILD
combustion can be achieved by premixing a certain amount of fuel with diluents such as CO 2
and N 2 . Recently de Joannon et al. [14] have reported the flameless oxidation process inside a
prismatic combustor with a high in- tensity cyclonic flow field while changing the air inlet
temper- ature. The cyclonic flow field was adopted to increase the resi- dence time and ensure
completeness of combustion [14, 29] . Sor- rentino et al . [15] have modeled this combustor [14]
as a constant- volume continuous stirred reactor for a wide range of operational parameters, such
as equivalence ratio, external dilution, and res- idence time with reactants at 900 K. They
concluded that adopt- ing a cyclonic combustor through geometric modifications ap- pears to be
a better choice compared to other configurations in- volving high momentum of reactants and
reverse flow field to achieve MILD combustion for a wide operational range and low CO and NO
x emissions [14,15] . Kumar et al . [16,17] developed flame- less combustion burners with high
intensity ( ∼2–10 MW/m 3 , 3 150 kW) and low emissions by internal preheating of reactants
and high recirculation through suitable modifications to the com- bustor geometry. A frustum of
a cone was used to help achieve higher recirculation rates in the proposed burner configuration

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 SMD variation for kerosene and biodiesel fuels for different injection pressures.

Variation of Droplet number density (DND) for the cases of 14N1, 30N1, and 48N1
repspectively for kerosene. 9N2 represents N2 nozzle at 9 bar injection pressure

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DISCUSSION ON LITERATURE

Based on the review of the papers mentioned above a list of advantages and disadvantages of the
flameless combustion is made and are as follows
Advantages:

1. Low storage volume requirement lowering the weight/load on the engine leading to
adding up to the performance
2. Higher Calorific value of the combustion resulting in complete combustion and better
performance
3. Ultra low NOx and noise dissipated in the flameless combustion

Disadvantages :

1. High energy density : volume restriction in gas turbine

2. Creating low O2 level
3. Extended operational range at part load operations

Below is a table on the details about the thermal power, fuel type, global equivalence ratio and
emissions from various studies in literature adopted from the study of the paper Saurabh et al

∗ TP-Thermal Power (kW), TI-Thermal Intensity (MW/m3)

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CHAPTER 3

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3.1 FUTURE WORK

Taking in consideration the literature review it is seen that flameless combustion in gas
turbine is a noble step towards sustainable development and environmental sustainability
with less dependence on renewable source as well as a deterrent in the high pollution
causing emissions
A thorough study in this field is done through CFD analysis and experimental work and
there is a scope of improvement in several areas in the same field .
The project to be taken up in the next semester includes work (Experimental and/or
Analytical) for the improvement in the following areas:

1. Potential of flameless combustion in gas turbines

2. Design optimization and fabrication of gas turbine flameless combustor
3. Increasing the heat release intensity in flameless regime
4. Optimization of input parameters in flameless combustor

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 REFERENCES

1. [Experimental and numerical analysis for high intensity swirl based ultra-low
emission flameless combustor operating with liquid fuels] V. Mahendra Reddya,b,
Amit Katocha, William L. Robertsb, Sudarshan Kumara
2. [Effect of CO2/N2 Dilution on Characteristics of Liquid Fuel Combustion in
Flameless Combustion Mode] Saurabh Sharma, Arindrajit Chowdhury &
Sudarshan Kumar

3. [A new emission reduction approach in MILD combustion through asymmetric

fuel injection] Saurabh Sharma, ∗, Hrishikesh Pingulkar, Arindrajit Chowdhury ,
Sudarshan Kumar

4. [On the effect of spray parameters on CO and NOx emissions in a liquid fuel fired
flameless combustor] Saurabh Sharmaa,, Rohit Kumarb, Arindrajit Chowdhurya,
Youngbin Yoonc, Sudarshan Kumar

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