ASME Turbo Expo 2017: Make Combustion Great Again!!!

We are honoured to be part of the renowned ASME Turbo Expo 2017. This year's ASME conference will be held from June 26 - 30 in Charlotte, North Carolina. CBOne will present two articles about its latest research about a novel probe concept for advanced combustion monitoring and about a method for the improvement of impaired combustion conditions at off-design operation points.

Chalotte likes it hot

For the improvement of impaired combustion conditions a robust acoustic driver (called siren) is used, being able to perform well and last long in an industrial environment. The previous figure suggests how the siren could be implemented on a real power gas turbine.

One could think about a single actuator connected to several burners via a manifold. 

a) The first configuration called blow-down makes use of a separate compressed air feed line, e.g. the one available for flushing the fuel pipes.

b) An alternative way would be to connect the actuator in bleed or discharge configuration, where e.g. the pilot feed air is periodically sucked from the burner upstream from the gas injection, and re-injected at suitable position between two turbine stages. 

 

For more information about the presentations click on the references below

Kraft, G. E., Giuliani, F., Pfefferkorn, L., Paulitsch, N., and Andracher, L., 2017. 
Heat resistant probe combining optic and acoustic sensors for advanced combustion monitoring including detection of flame instabilities. 
In Proceedings of ASME Turbo Expo, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. GT2017-63626. 

Giuliani, F., Pfefferkorn, L., and Kraft, G. E., 2017. 
Improvement of impaired combustion conditions at some off-design operation by driving a precisely controlled modulation of the burner air feed. 
In Proceedings of ASME Turbo Expo, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. GT2017-64429.

Further information regarding the ASME Turbo Expo 2017 can be found here: https://www.asme.org/events/turbo-expo

 

Heat resistant probe combining optic and acoustic sensors for advanced combustion monitoring including detection of flame instabilities (GT2017-63626)

So far aviation industry uses optical measurement techniques only during the development of new aero-engines. This led Combustion Bay One to the idea of built-in heat resistant probes combining optical and acoustic measurements in order to gain detailed information about the engine's health status. The flame's front position, the emission products and the combustion stability during flight operation can be monitored simultaneously and in real-time.

In collaborative work with the aviation department of FH Joanneum Graz a probe was designed in order to establish a proof of the concept toward the optical instrumentation of the combustor of an aero-engine. Therefore several sets of sensors and circuits were analysed, and it turned out that the non-amplified reverse current circuit offers the best trade-off between simplicity and signal dynamic. A microphone was combined with the probe in order to measure simultaneously the flame’s noise and its intensity of luminescence.

The resulting probe is multi-purpose, it covers simultaneously several features: 

  • flame detection, 
  • ignition success, 
  • qualitative information on the operation, 
  • and combustion stability monitoring. 

 

A promising design was tested, and the probe features were successfully validated on an atmospheric combustion test rig. The next efforts will focus on the probe operation under more demanding conditions, as well as on the optimisation of the measurement chain.