Concentration of carbon dioxide in products of combustion of GTE NK-16ST and NK-16-18ST

This paper considers the design of two combustion chambers of a gas turbine engine running on natural gas. One combustion chamber has 32 burners, and the other has 136 nozzles located in two rows in the flame tube head. A major contributor to global warming is considered to be the significant emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, including those emitted by gas turbine engines and power plants. The reduction of carbon dioxide levels by developing a set of structural measures in the combustion chamber is one of the urgent tasks of engine construction which requires a solution in order to meet modern environmental requirements for gas turbine engines serving as blower drives for gas compressor units. The presented research is dedicated to the analysis of influence of changes in combustion chamber design on reduction of СО2 level in exhaust gases of gas turbine engine NK-16ST. Two modifications of the combustion chamber are considered. The first one was a serial combustion chamber with diffusion combustion, the second one was a modernized combustion chamber with a modified front device. Each of the chambers considered was tested as part of the engine. During the study, combustion products were sampled directly in the exhaust shaft and their concentrations, including the CO2 content, were determined. As a result of this work, it was confirmed that there is a possibility to reduce the concentration of CO2 in the engine combustion products up to 20 % without affecting the engine parameters. This reduction in carbon dioxide content was made possible by reducing the completeness of fuel combustion in the combustion chamber. The obtained data on changes in CO2 concentration can be useful in selecting the most suitable mode of engine operation, and the presented approaches to combustion processes organization can be used by developers in designing combustion chambers of natural gas-fired gas turbine engines.