Strict
emission control regulations call for continuous advancement
in existing combustion and carbon-capture technologies to mitigate
the rise in pollutants and greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion.
Concurrently, improvements in combustion systems would also yield
lower fuel consumption and operational cost with greater efficiency.
This review addresses these concerns and presents the overview of
different combustion technologies and burner designs for cleaner power
generation in gas turbines. Emission characteristics are discussed
and compared for different combustion concepts, including lean premixed
air combustion and oxy-combustion. Various gas turbine burner technologies,
including dry low NO
x
, enhanced-vortex,
perforated-plate, and micromixer burners, are discussed extensively,
in terms of their operating principle, fuel flexibility, and potential
for superior performance under oxy-combustion conditions. Enhanced-vortex
and micromixer burners show remarkable flame stability and fuel flexibility
and are thus recommended for implementation with hydrogen enrichment
in future oxy-fuel gas turbines. The fuel-flexibility approaches for
clean energy production, such as hydrogen combustion, hydrogen-enriched
combustion, syngas combustion, ammonia combustion, and fuel blending,
are explored as well. With the vast recent advances in the techniques
of hydrogen production and storage, hydrogen-fueled gas turbines seem
to be the perfect choice for clean energy production. The adiabatic
flame temperature is identified as a key controlling parameter for
the design of oxidizer-flexible combustors in clean gas turbines.