Experimental Studies of Crude Oil Combustion in a Top-Mounted Silo Combustor

Abstract

Crude oil is still an attractive fuel for electricity production due to its low extraction costs in relation to other fuels. However, combustion of crude oil in modern gas turbines must meet certain criteria, which mainly include the reduction of harmful gas emissions, the elimination of harmful dust from the exhaust gas, the improvement of turbine efficiency, the limiting of the power degradation process and elimination of hard deposits. Experimental studies are always needed to meet these requirements because of common complexity in CFD crude oil combustion models. This paper presents experimental investigations of the combustion process of crude oil. Using different sorts of crude oil, all experiments are performed in the atmospheric test rig of a top-mounted combustor, which was scaled down from the baseline system. The test rig was optimized for the typical silo gas turbine boundary conditions. The combustion process is described and quantified with the measured temperature and velocity field distributions in the top-mounted combustion chamber for different injector design’s parameters. Additionally, measured profiles of the molar fraction of CO2, are discussed and compared with respect to the injector parameters. Finally, based upon the experimental results gathered, the possibility of fuel flexibility in the top-mounted combustor chamber is discussed.

Investigation of Combustion Properties and Soot Deposits of Various US Crude Oils

“…The method of Coats and Redfern was used to obtain kinetic parameters, and the results were discussed. An investigation of the combustion process of crude oil was performed by Nowak et al [23]. A top-mounted combustor was scaled down from the baseline system, and different types of crude oil were burnt in the atmospheric test rig.…”

Cleaner crude oil combustion during superheated steam atomization

“…2(a), does not allow high-quality combustion of heavy liquid fuels, including crude oil. Crude oil, in contrast to light types of liquid fuel, contains long chains of hydrocarbons [5], whose combustion requires a longer residence time in the combustion zone. Therefore, in this work, we have modernized the burner, based on the principle of staged combustion, which allows organizing more favorable internal aerodynamics, fig.…”

“…Existing technologies do not always ensure the achievement of the modern required energy and environmental parameters, when using crude oil because of unstable ignition and combustion in the --------------furnace, fast coking of burner surfaces, etc. This is due to oil features: multifractionality, content of mechanical impurities and water, significant amount of sulfur compounds, and nitrogencontaining products, heavy residues [5], which produce combustion products with a high content of soot and toxic components such as NOx and SOx, when being burned. The problems of crude oil combustion, associated with the presence of hydrocarbons with different viscosity in its composition, density and boiling point in oil composition, are considered in [6,7].…”