BIGH2 – Enabling Pre-Combustion CCS Plants (SP 1)

The use of hydrogen in gas turbines is one of the measures that can be used together with so-called “pre-combustion capture”, ie CO₂ capture before combustion in gas and coal power plants (IGCC). Through literature studies, laboratory tests and CFD calculations, the project establishes a platform of knowledge and calculation tools about hydrogen combustion and NOx formation that is relevant for gas turbines that are fired with low-NOx burner technology so-called “lean premixed” combustion.

The challenge with such combustion is to find the optimal compromise between flame stabilization and low flame temperature without diluting the fuel.

A typical problem in the hydrogen-fired gas turbine is unwanted creep (so-called “flashback”) of the flame along the wall which interferes with burner operation (high emissions or damage). By reproducing this case experimentally on controlled experiments at the Technische Universität München, a new insight into the understanding of the phenomenon that refutes the existing and well-adopted model was revealed.

Another part of the project is based on extensive work in the development of a flow model that can be used in CFD and that is able to capture the complexity of microscale mixing of hydrogen in combustion chambers with a reasonable computing power.

An activity has also been started to explore the effect of turbulence on the production of NOx in gas turbines for hydrogen. Here we use Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS), which is a tool that solves all the fundamental equations without any kind of modeling and can therefore be considered a “numerical experiment”.