Tools for the prediction of gas turbine combustion fuelled with synthetic fuels

德国领先的飞机发动机制造商MTU航空发动机公司认识到，为了确保长途航空运输的可持续未来，有必要过渡到生物燃料；这将需要对未来燃气轮机的设计进行彻底改变，以允许燃料灵活性。目前燃气轮机燃烧室的设计大多基于先验知识；目前用于燃烧室设计的模型往往是经验性的，并基于使用化石燃料的性能进行调整。显然有必要改进这些工具，以便考虑到更换燃料的影响。布什博士领导的UBC燃烧模拟小组提供了一种创新的替代方法，即统一条件状态燃烧模型，该模型使用的计算资源比其他方法少得多，同时显著提高了预测能力。新的方法允许模拟更广泛的燃料，并已嵌入MTU在模拟燃气轮机燃烧室时使用的免费、开放源代码的计算流体动力学程序包中。需要进一步改进模拟，以便能够预测燃烧室内固体表面的热传递，并改进对污染物排放的预测。该项目的目的是证明，正在开发的工具能够准确预测空气中喷气燃料A的火焰中的污染物和热传递，以及使用替代的低烟尘燃料如甲醇、二甲醚和OMES的火焰，这些燃料可以相对容易地从生物来源获得高产量，因此最终可能可持续地生产。与MTU航空发动机合作，布什博士和他在UBC燃烧模拟小组的学生将对这些模型进行必要的改进和验证，以便产生的计算工具将对这些用于喷气推进的下一代燃料的设计有用。

MTU Aero Engines, Germany's leading aircraft engine manufacturer, recognizes that, in order to secure a sustainable future for long-haul air transportation, it will be necessary to transition to bio-fuels; this will necessitate a sea-change in the design of future gas turbines to permit fuel flexibility. Much of the design of current gas turbine combustion chambers is based on prior knowledge; the models currently used in combustor design tend to be empirical in nature and are tuned based on the performance using fossil fuels. There is a clear need for improvements to these tools in such a way as to account for the effects of changing the fuel. The UBC combustion simulation group under Dr. Bushe offers an innovative alternative methodology, the Uniform Conditional State combustion model, which uses significantly less computational resources than other methods while providing significant improvement in the predictive capabilities. The new approach allows for a much wider range of fuels to be simulated and has been embedded in a free, open-source Computational Fluid Dynamics package that MTU uses in their simulations of gas turbine combustors.Further improvements to the modelling are needed to allow predictions of heat transfer to solid surfaces inside the combustion chamber and improved predictions of the emissions of pollutants. The aim of this project is to demonstrate that the tools under development can provide accurate predictions of pollutants and heat transfer for flames of jet fuel A in air, in addition to flames with alternative, low-sooting fuels such as methanol, DME and OMEs - fuels that can be made relatively easily from biological sources with a high yield, and, as such, may ultimately be produced sustainably. Working with MTU Aero Engines, Dr. Bushe and his students in the combustion simulation group at UBC will develop the needed improvements to - and validation of - these models so that the resulting computational tool will be useful for design for these next-generation fuels for jet propulsion.