Volume 21: Sustainable Energy Solutions for a Post-COVID Recovery towards a Better Future: Part IV

Fuel flexibility of a 100kWe micro gas turbine: Combustion performance using natural gas and non-conventional syngas Jeremy Bompas, Ward De Paepe

Abstract

Worldwide electricity consumption is still increasing while there is the ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To ensure sufficient sustainable electricity resources for our society, an energy source diversification is necessary. Indeed, next to high potential but intermittent renewable energies like wind and solar, traditional thermal power production using renewable resources like syngas and biogas are good candidates to achieve these energy mix goals. However, given their specific properties, i.e. having a lower energy content, better characterize of non-conventional energy sources in their combustion behavior is needed.
In this work, we compare the combustion behavior of syngas with natural gas in the complex geometry of a typical mGT combustor, the Turbec T100. A first approach includes the development of a turbulent combustion model that allows to validate the temperature fields and species concentration gradients for natural gas, reference case in known conditions. In a second step, we aim to get some first insight on the effect of using biogas through injection in the main flame.
The results show the temperature fields for both natural and syngas as well as an accurate prediction on intermediate species and NOx, CO, CO2 and H2O in the flue gases. These obtained results will serve as benchmark for future characterization for a specific range of diluted inlet conditions of various syngases and biogases, which will allow to fully exploit its potential syngas in small-scale cogeneration application.

Keywords CFD, micro gas turbine, renewable energy, syngas, emission