international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Experiment study on the combustion performance

of hydrogen-enriched natural gas in a DLE burner

Bing Ge a,*, Yongbin Ji a, Zilai Zhang a, Shusheng Zang a, Yinshen Tian b,

Hai Yu b, Mingmin Chen b, Guangyun Jiao b, Dongfang Zhang b
a
Institute of Turbomachinery, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Dongchuan Road
800, Shanghai, 200240, China
b
Shanghai Electric Gas Turbine CO., Ltd, Shanghai, 200240, China

article info abstract

Article history: The effect of hydrogen enrichment to natural gas swirling flame was experimentally
Received 7 November 2018 investigated at atmospheric pressure conditions using a radially-staged DLE (Dry Low
Received in revised form Emission) burner. The hydrogen volume content was varied as 0%, 5%, 11%, 21% and 26% in
23 March 2019 the fuel blend to assess that whether it is beneficial or detrimental to combustion
Accepted 28 March 2019 characteristics. OH-PLIF (Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence) measurement was performed
Available online xxx to examine macro flame topology at both stable combustion conditions. NOx and CO
emission was also analyzed. In terms of unstable combustion, pressure fluctuation during
Keywords: combustion instability was monitored by dynamic pressure transducers to characterize the
Gas turbine dominant frequency as well as pressure oscillation amplitude. Based on the real time
Dry Low Emission pressure signal, phase-locked PLIF method was utilized to give phase averaged OH images
OH-PLIF during one thermo-acoustic cycle. The experimental results indicate that the flame shrinks
Combustion instability distinctly when the addition of hydrogen is increased to certain content. To be specific, the
Hydrogen enriched flame structure changes little as the hydrogen content is lower than 5%, and the flame
expanding angle also keeps well. Once the hydrogen concentration is boosted to be over
11%, the flame expands greatly towards the confinement wall. Meanwhile NOx emission
increases gradually, but CO emission keeps stable with slightly decrease. The amplitude of
the dynamic pressure pulsation reduces with hydrogen addition, but the dominant fre-
quency presents to be irrelevant with hydrogen enrichment during combustion oscillation.
It can be concluded that hydrogen addition in the natural gas at this realistic radially
staged burner shows potential ability to inhibit combustion instability somehow. The 2D
Rayleigh Index distribution then indicates proves that the main circulation zone and
flame-wall interaction zone are two regions where local heat release and pressure
fluctuation coupled to induce combustion thermo-acoustic problems.
© 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: gebing@sjtu.edu.cn (B. Ge).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.03.257
0360-3199/© 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Ge B et al., Experiment study on the combustion performance of hydrogen-enriched natural gas in a DLE
burner, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.03.257
2 international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (xxxx) xxx
Introduction
With the rapid development of economy, environmental
protection and energy shortage are becoming more and more
acute in China. Coal to natural gas (Synthetic Natural Gas,
SNG) and coal to electricity via syngas (Integrated Gasification
Combined Cycle, IGCC) [1] have been developed and realized
in several demonstrations and commercial plants. Then
the development of advanced combustion technologies for
gaseous hydrogen blended hydrocarbon fuels in gas turbine
applications is an area of much current interest.
Hydrogen shows quite different combustion properties
with respect to hydrocarbon fuels. It is characterized by a wide
flammability limit, easy ignition (low ignition energy, low
ignition temperature and short ignition delay time), high
energy density and high laminar flame speed. With addition of
hydrogen to hydrocarbon fuels, the fuel composition changes,
causing both the chemical and physical processes are affected
in flames. These variations consequently have an influence on
the flame stability, combustor acoustics, pollutant emissions
and combustion efficiency.
Prior using hydrogen or other hydrogen contained fuels in
any industrial gas turbine engine, it is important to evaluate
how the hydrogen enrichment influences the flame structure
fundamentally. Many studies on addition of hydrogen to
methane or natural gas flames in conventional combustion
like laminar flame have been reported in recent years. It was
found that hydrogen in the fuel blend will alter combustion
characteristics in terms of soot formation, laminar burning
velocities and stability. Hu et al. [2] studied effect of hydrogen
enrichment on the laminar flame speed at a wide range of
equivalence ratio for CH4/air flames. They identified three
regimes namely methane dominated flames, transition
flames and hydrogen dominated flames. Increasing hydrogen
concentration in the fuel causes linearly increase of laminar
burning velocity for methane dominated and hydrogen
dominated flame, while exponentially increase for transition
flames. Sarli et al. [3] also found linear correlation of laminar
flame speed to the hydrogen concentration in the fuel blend
via numerical simulations on hydrogen-methane air
premixed combustion.
On the basis of conventional simple injector studies, fuel
blend (CH4/H2) combustion behavior of swirling flame has also
been examined. Kim et al. [4] observed that the lean blowout
limit is shifted towards leaner equivalence ratios for hydrogen
enriched methane flames operated under atmospheric pres-
sure conditions. Natural gas enriched with hydrogen has a low
production of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and unburned
hydrocarbons [5]. Imteyaz et al. [6] performed experimental
investigations on the characteristics of hydrogen-enriched
flames in a swirl-stabilized premixed combustor. Their re-
sults indicated that both the flashback and blow-out limits
tend to move towards the leaner side with increasing
hydrogen fraction. In terms of flashback, which is likely to be
seen in hydrogen or hydrogen enrichment flame because of
higher flame speed, Scho € nborn et al. [7] experimentally
investigated the effect of processing vortex core on flashback
property in hydrogen swirling flames. And they observed that
due to the eccentric motion of the processing vortex core
Please cite this article as: Ge B et al., Experiment study on the combustion performance of hydrogen-enriched natural gas in a DLE
burner, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.03.257
inhibits the flashback of swirling flames. Hydrogen addition
will also affect the flame structure. The higher reactivity and
higher flame speed associated with flames having hydrogen
components in the fuel make the flame front thinner and also
the flame to move more upstream compared to flames
without hydrogen in the fuel. Thus, the flame reaches shorter
into the combustor [8]. De et al. [9] carried out parametric
study of upstream flame propagation in hydrogen-enriched
premixed combustion by Large Eddy Simulation with a
Thickened Flame (TF) model. They mainly focus on the effect
of swirl strength, geometry and premixed ness. Dinesh et al.
[10] also utilized LES method to compare the difference
between H2 and CO enrichment syngas non-premixed swirl-
ing flame characteristics. It indicated that hydrogen enriched
fuel burns to form a much thicker flame with a larger vortex
breakdown bubble compared to H2-lean but CO-rich syngas. It
is assumed to be caused by higher diffusivity property of
hydrogen. Rajpara et al. [11] studied the emission character-
istics of CH4/H2 blend fuel in a swirl can combustor and
pointed out that hydrogen addition can increase flame tem-
perature, decrease flame dimensions and thus reduces CO
emissions with marginal increase in NOx emissions.
Not only stable characteristics, hydrogen addition in the
fuel will also alter the unstable performance namely combus-
tion instability of swirling flames. Aliyu et al. [12] studied the
effects of hydrogen enrichment on stability of non-premixed
CH4eO2 flames in a swirl combustor. They pointed out that
0.95 is the critical value of equivalence ratio for combustion
stability. Allison et al. [13] investigated hydrogen enriched hy-
drocarbon fuel partially premixed unstable combustion char-
acteristics on a radially staged swirler. It pointed out that the
dominant frequencies of combustion oscillation are different
in a wide range when hydrogen concentration varies. Specif-
ically, characteristic frequency shifts to the higher value as
more hydrogen is added into the methane, but the amplitude
decreases. Davis et al. [14] experimentally compared the
topology of CH4/Air flame and 0.1 CH4/0.9H2/Air flame at the
same inlet air flow velocity, which showed that hydrogen
enriched flame fluctuates more with shorter length. Also
concluded from 2D Rayleigh Index distribution characteristics,
blend fuel with hydrogen is more likely to cause combustion
instability. Giezendanner et al. [15] also got the same conclu-
sions. Experimental tests and analysis had been done by Yil-
maz et al. [16] to examine the combustion instabilities
of hydrogen-methane blended fuels for a low-swirl lean pre-
mixed burner by actively excitation. They found strong
coupling in the flame base with hydrogen fraction increases.
However, Figura et al. [17] studied methane-air enriched
with hydrogen lean premixed combustion and concluded that
increment of the hydrogen fraction in the fuel affects little on
flame structure and it helps the combustion to present more
stable. Emadi et al. [18] also pointed out the possibility that
adding hydrogen into the fuel blend can make the flame less
interact with large and small vortices, which consequently
can inhibit combustion instability.
The effect of hydrogen addition on swirling flame com-
bustion characteristics can vary from burner to burner. Lots of
work has been done on the academic burner with simple
configurations, but few on realistic industrial burner with
more complicated combustion arrangement strategy. The
 international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (xxxx) xxx
primary of the present work is to experimentally characterize
the combustion properties including flame stability and
dynamics when enriching natural gas with of hydrogen at a
wide concentration range in a radially-staged DLE burner.
Experimental setup
Experimental system
The experiment was conducted on the advanced high tem-
perature rise combustion test bench at the Institute of
Turbomachinery (TMI) in Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Fig. 1
depicts the schematic view of the experimental system. The
setup is mainly made up of four sub-systems, mainstream air
system, pilot and main fuel system, PLIF diagnostic system
and the test section. A screw compressor supplies the main
flow going through the combustor at atmospheric pressure
and the mass flowrate was adjusted by Mass Flow Controller
(MFC) with high accuracy and response. A 36 kW electric
heater is assembled in the main line to elevate inlet air tem-
perature, simulating realistic high temperature air inlet. The
optically accessible combustor is made of quartz glass with an
inner diameter of 250 mm and a length of 300 mm, providing
full optical path to the flame. The burned gas is flowed into the
water-cooled exhaust section and further quenched by water
injection to cool it down before discharging into the outer
atmosphere.
The configuration of the radially-staged DLE burner is
shown in Fig. 2. This hybrid burner consists of central and
outer nozzles. The central one is a typical axial swirler, while
the outer one is convergent flow passages separated by
20 blades with premixed fuel holes on them. The pilot fuel is
fed through four pipes equally distributed at the upstream of
the forehead end of the central nozzle, aside of the hub. So,
the flame from pilot nozzle is partially premixed. While,
most of the fuel is pumped into the small passages inside
the blades and then injected out from the holes on that.
Unburned gas is fully mixed with surrounding air in the
passage, and then flowed out of the nozzle to perform lean
premixed combustion. Pilot and main fuels are controlled by
two Mass Flow Controllers (MFCs) independently to adjust
Fig. 1 e Sketch of the combustor and test rig.
Please cite this article as: Ge B et al., Experiment study on the combustion performance of hydrogen-enriched natural gas in a DLE
burner, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.03.257
3
fuel separation ratio. The outlet diameter of DLE burner (D) is
70 mm.
Phase-locked flame diagnostic
Six dynamic pressure sensors in total used in the experiment,
their locations are as shown in Fig. 1. To be specific, the pres-
sure fluctuations in the main air line are monitored by pres-
sure transducers P1 and P2 (the former one is at more
upstream near the inlet of the plenum for pressure stabilizing,
while the latter one locates at just the upstream of the dome
plate). Transducer P3 is assembled to obtain the dynamic
pressure signal on the fuel line. These three are the same type
sensors. On the hot side, another three water-cooled dynamic
transducers (WCTV-312-25SG) are arranged along the stream
direction on the combustor wall, which are marked with P4, P5
and P6 in Fig. 1. All of them collect pressure data with a sam-
pling rate of 2.5 kHz.
Planar laser induced fluorescence of OH radical is
employed to measure flame configuration and heat release
rate. The excitation laser derives from a pulsed Nd: YAG laser
pumping a tunable dye laser with Rhodamine 6G as dye
solution before going through a frequency double crystal. The
output ultraviolet laser beam has the wavelength of 281.46 nm
with pulse duration of 20 ns at the power of 4 mJ, which is used
to excite OH radicals. The ultraviolet laser beam is expanded
by a set of spherical and cylindrical lenses, forming a laser
sheet with the thickness less than 500 mm. The laser sheet is
guided horizontally through over the center of three nozzles.
The excited fluorescence is then collected by an ICCD camera
placed perpendicular to the laser sheet plane with Nikon UV
lens, in front of which a combined UG11 and WG305 inter-
ference filter set is installed to suppress scattered laser light
and background flame radiation. Timing delay of PLIF system
is controlled by a pulse delay generator DG535. An Andor
istar 334T ICCD camera equipped with a UV filter (center
wavelength of 310 nm, FWHM of 10 nm) is used, and its
sensing array is 1024
1024 pixels. The exposure time of ICCD
camera is set to 50 ns to ensure a complete OH fluorescence
for each instantaneous laser shot. The flame is assumed to be
axisymmetric, so for the PLIF measurement, only half of
the flame is imaged to enhance the spatial resolution. The
4 international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 2 e Configuration of DLE burner.

corresponding PLIF region of interest is 98 mm
98 mm
(1.4D
1.4D), and its relative location inside the combustor is
shown in Fig. 3.
Restricted by the current low frequency PLIF hardware
capacity, to characterize the instability behavior of the multi-
nozzle flames, phase-locked methodology is carried out.
Phase-locked method [6], triggering the measurement with
respect to the varying pressure in the combustor, allows the
study of periodic variations of the flame at different phases
during combustion oscillations. The dynamic pressure ac-
quired from the combustor is first band-pass filtered at its
dominant oscillation frequency, which is pre-collected
without laser diagnostics application. The resulting dynamic
pressure, p’, is then used as the reference signal for triggering
the phase-locked measurements. Time sequence of the
reference pressure and the corresponding phase-locked
triggering is shown in Fig. 4 p0 is selected as the threshold
value for triggering. Pressure exceeding p0 generates a positive
signal triggering the delay generator, which itself generates
the trigger signal for the laser and the ICCD camera. This
phase corresponding to p0 is defined as phase 0. Subsequently,
the system continuously triggers the delay generator every 50
pressure oscillation cycles. 60 images are obtained at a same
phase angle. To carry out the measurements at different
phase angles, a delay time is applied. For phase 1 a time delay t
is added to the system as p’ exceeds p0, where t ¼ 1=ðfNÞ and N
is the number of phase angles required. When this measure-
ment is repeated over a series of phase angles covering the
entire cycle, the temporal evolution of average flame struc-
tures is obtained. Quantities of interests such as the heat
release fluctuations and Rayleigh index are then calculated.
Operating conditions
Experiments were operated over a wide range of hydrogen
content, volume ratio up to 26%. The test conditions are
shown as following Table 1. The inlet air is heated up to 600 K
and the volume flow rate is fixed as 120 m3/h. For different
conditions, thermal load is kept constant as 72.4 kW. Also the
fuel separation ratio is not varied, with main fuel percentage
of 89% and pilot fuel percentage of 11%. The reason for
choosing a fixed energy output for different fuel blends and at
a fixed air flow rate is that the burner studied in this study is a
realistic scaled down industrial nozzle, so more concerns is
about to know that how the combustion performance change
at a certain power output with different percentage hydrogen
added into or replace the natural gas.
Results and discussion

Mean flame structure

Fig. 5 shows the flame photos for nature gas DLE burner
enriched with different percentage of hydrogen. At the con-
dition of [H2] ¼ 0%, that is, no hydrogen is added into the

Fig. 3 e OH-PLIF measurement region. Fig. 4 e Phase-locked triggering signal sequence.

Please cite this article as: Ge B et al., Experiment study on the combustion performance of hydrogen-enriched natural gas in a DLE
burner, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.03.257
 international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (xxxx) xxx 5

It was pointed out by many previous fundamental studies

Table 1 e Operation conditions.
[19] that laminar flame speed increases linearly and
case [H2] thermal percentage percentage gradually with the hydrogen ratio in the fuel blend in the
NO. (vol%) load (kW) of main fuel of pilot fuel
range of 0%e50% when the equivalence ratio is kept constant.
1 0 72.4 89% 11% Previous experimental work [20] concluded that the length of
2 5 72.4 89% 11% the flame will reduce with [H2] increment because of the
3 11 72.4 89% 11%
increasing flame speed for the axial swirler at diffusion com-
4 21 72.4 89% 11%
bustion status. The nozzle used in this work is dual-swirling
5 26 72.4 89% 11%
radially, 11% of fuel flows through inner pilot passage to
perform diffusion or partially premixed combustion while
other 89% fuel enters into the combustor through the outer
fuel-air mixing passage to realize premixed combustion.
natural gas, the flame fulfill the whole combustor, also in the So, it is a typical combined combustion mode dominated
corner recirculation zone. As the hydrogen content increases, by the premixed combustion at dual-swirling mode. Although
the flame shrinks both in length and width, and flame near the it is very difficult to define accurate “flame length” standard at
nozzle outlet gets thicker. Meanwhile, the flame at the corner
recirculation zone gets disappeared.
As mentioned above, due to the size limitation of the
measurement region, only half of the combustor near the
laser shoot side is seen by the OH-PLIF camera. To make it
presented more clearly, another half region was mirrored with
the axis of combustor centerline during the post processing
considering the axisymmetric property. As shown in Fig. 6,
time-averaged OH-PLIF result is the mean of the 300 instan-
taneous frames for each condition, and the axis is marked
with dash-dot line in the figures. White and blue colors
represent high and low intensity of [OH] signal. It has to be
pointed out that the high intensity region in time averaged
OH-PLIF results doesn't indicate where instantaneous chem-
ical reaction exactly happens, which mostly locates in the
shear layer. It is more like an accumulation effect, but the area
enveloped by high intensity [OH] can be viewed as the certain
formation of the flame structure, or reaction zone. The burner
is placed at the bottom investigated region and facing up-
wards. It points out that the flame looks like in a “petal” shape,
including central and near-wall intensely reaction zones.
With the increase of the volume percentage of hydrogen in the
fuel blend, near-wall flame gets disappeared. Flame shape in
the central zone transforms to “spindle” shape.
Fluorescence signal intensity weighted center is calculated
from the OH-PLIF images for all test conditions to evaluate the
location of the center of the flame. The expanding angle of the
flame is defined as the angle between the combustor axis and
the line connecting flame center with the nozzle outlet center.
Axial and radial distances of flame center deviates from the
nozzle outlet center (H and R) as well as flame expanding angle
(a) are diagramed in Fig. 7. Comparison results for these pa-
rameters at different conditions are depicted in Figs. 8 and 9.
It can be concluded that both the center location and the
expanding angle varies little when [H2]&5%. However, as [H2]
is elevated to be higher than 11%, both the radial distance and
the angle increases firstly and then decreases with increment
of hydrogen content ratio. It can also be told from the [OH]
distributions in Fig. 6, which is, the reaction region locates
close to the axis at low [H2] conditions. As [H2] increases, this
region departs away from the axis, which also explains why
the expanding angle becomes greater when [H2] reaches over
11%. Meanwhile, the near-wall reaction region starts to
squeeze and gets disappeared, leading to the decrease of the
expanding angle. Fig. 5 e Typical hydrogen enriched natural gas flames.

Please cite this article as: Ge B et al., Experiment study on the combustion performance of hydrogen-enriched natural gas in a DLE
burner, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.03.257
6 international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 8 e Axial and radial deviation distances (H and R).

Fig. 9 e Variation of flame expanding angle.

Fig. 6 e Time-averaged OH radical distributions.

Fig. 10 e Amplitude of pressure oscillations.

this a little complicated combustion situation, it is clear to see

from the experimental results that higher flame speed makes
the chemical reaction finished in a smaller space, thus the
Fig. 7 e Diagram for flame topology measurement. high temperature regions decreases a lot and the near-wall

Please cite this article as: Ge B et al., Experiment study on the combustion performance of hydrogen-enriched natural gas in a DLE
burner, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.03.257
 international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (xxxx) xxx
Fig. 11 e NOx and CO emissions.
high temperature zone even gets disappearing. So, it is
believed that increased flame speed is the real underlying
cause behind of the flame structure variation, like expanding
angle.
Pressure fluctuation and emissions
Pressure oscillation inside the combustor along with the time
at different [H2] conditions was detected by the dynamic
pressure transducers, and the maximum pressure fluctuation
amplitude is shown in Fig. 10. It points out that as addition
hydrogen fraction increasing the pressure fluctuation ampli-
tude goes through a sharp decrease. Specifically, p'max reaches
as high as 0.08 bar at the case without hydrogen in the fuel.
However, once hydrogen starts to blend with natural gas, p'max
drops to 0.02 bar. Moreover, more hydrogen further blended
into the fuel doesn't make the pressure oscillation magnitude
Fig. 12 e Phase-averaged flame structure evolution in one oscillation period.
Please cite this article as: Ge B et al., Experiment study on the combustion performance of hydrogen-enriched natural gas in a DLE
burner, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.03.257
7
vary too much. Applied FFT result shows that the dominant
frequency is around 127 Hz, that is, hydrogen enrichment will
not alter the combustion instability frequency, only with
reduction of the oscillation extend. It is also can be seen from
above time-averaged OH intensity distribution from the PLIF
measurement that mixing and varying hydrogen content in
the natural gas has little effect on flame-front shape charac-
terization, that's why the waveform and frequency of dynamic
pressure inside the combustor varies little for different
hydrogen fraction ratio conditions.
Emission, mainly including NOx and CO, is another
important parameter to assess the overall combustion per-
formance for designed burner, which is plotted in Fig. 11 for
different [H2] cases. It is understood that the adiabatic
flame temperature is elevated a little with the increment of
hydrogen percentage in the fuel blend, so NOx emission is
correspondingly augmented a little contributed by the fact
that the thermal NOx is the dominant path of generating nitric
oxide in this application. While CO emission reduces a little is
the consequence of the reduced carbon in the blend fuel as
more hydrogen concentration is added.
Flame dynamics during combustion oscillation
In order to determine the flame dynamics for this staged DLE
burner, phase-locked OH-PLIF measurement was imple-
mented at [H2] ¼ 0% and [H2] ¼ 5% conditions, obtaining flame
topology at different certain phases, as shown in Fig. 12.
The axis of the combustor is at the left edge of image and the
right edge is near the combustor liner wall. Mainstream flows
from bottom to top direction. The 2D distribution feature tells
that two reaction zones, which locate near the axis center and
combustor wall respectively, behave as “merge-depart-merge”
pattern along with the pressure fluctuation distinctly. It also
possibly means that the extinction and re-ignition occurs in the
interaction region between two reaction zones. For the case
without hydrogen, this pattern is more obvious. It can be seen
8 international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (xxxx) xxx
Fig. 13 e Comparison of the Rayleigh index distribution.
from further comparison that as hydrogen is added in the fuel
blend, corner recirculation zone is always absent of combus-
tion. While it is not the case for the [H2] ¼ 0 conditions. Coupling
effect of the instantaneous flame structure and pressure can be
expressed by the alternation of shape as well as intensity of the
reaction zones near the combustor axis.
To reveal underlying mechanism or get to know where is the
instability source and how thermoacoustics gets suppressed,
Rayleigh index (RI) is evaluated. RI characterized the relation-
ship between pressure fluctuation inside the combustor and
combustion flame heat release pulsation as defined:
ZT
1 [H2] ¼ 0% and [H2] ¼ 5%, area of high RI value for [H2] ¼ 5% case
RIðx; yÞ ¼ p'q'dt
T is smaller than that for [H2] ¼ 0% case and distinct damping
0
p’ represents the fluctuation magnitude of the pressure, q’
is the heat release fluctuation pulsation and T is the
Fig. 14 e Diagram of RI inside of the combustion chamber.
Please cite this article as: Ge B et al., Experiment study on the combustion performance of hydrogen-enriched natural gas in a DLE
burner, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.03.257
oscillation period, extracted from the FFT results of the
dynamic pressure signal. Heat release was deduced from the
integrated OH-PLIF results since good correlation is assumed
built between the fluorescence intensity and combustion
temperature. Positive RI means superposing-coupling (in
phase) of the pressure and heat release fluctuations during the
combustion, and this is regarded as the main driving force of
the combustion instability. Reversely, the pressure oscillation
will be damped if the RI is negative, because heat release and
pressure waves are out of phase.
Owe to phase-locked methodology, with corresponding
pressure and heat release data at the same phase, RI can be
successfully calculated. Fig. 13 shows the RI contours for two
cases ([H2] ¼ 0% and [H2] ¼ 5%) separately. It can be concluded
easily that the region downstream of the burner outlet can be
divided into three parts according RI value in the combustor.
The first one is the central zone, which mainly locates in the
region between the combustor axis and the outer edge of the
swirler, close to the combustor axis, where main recirculation
zone is formed. The second one is transition zone, which lo-
cates around at the distance of 0.75D from the axis, also it
seems to be in the rim of shear layer zone. The last one is near-
wall zone. Fig. 14 illustrates these partitions clearly. RI in the
central zone tends to be higher than that in other regions for
two cases. Although near-wall region always presents positive
RI value but it is always lower than that in the central zone. By
contrast, the transition zone is covered with negative RI for
both cases. It is assumed that the instability inside of the main
circulation zone and flame-wall interaction zone are probably
causes of combustion instability problem for this burner in the
confined combustor configuration. Comparing the cases of
effect occurred in the transition zone. This is the reason why
combustion instability gets weaken when the natural gas
flame is enriched with hydrogen.
Conclusions
The combustion performance of hydrogen-enriched natural
gas in a radially staged DLE burner was experimentally
investigated with varying hydrogen concentrations from 0%
to 26% with the help of the OH-PLIF measurements. Especially,
its effect on combustion instability was characterized. In
general, the experimental results led us to know that the
flame shrinks distinctly when the amount of hydrogen in the
fuel blend is increased. The flame topology alters little when
hydrogen content is lower than 5%. As hydrogen content is
increased to be over 11%, the flame expanding angle increases
quickly. Emission sampled at the combustor rig outlet shows
that NOx emission increases when hydrogen content is higher
than 11%. But CO emission is not sensitive to the variation of
hydrogen concentration. Regarding to combustion oscillation,
it is pointed out that hydrogen addition can bring down the
pressure fluctuation amplitude of the hydrogen-enriched
nature gas flame, but has little influence on the frequency of
pressure fluctuations. According to the Rayleigh index 2D
distribution map inside the combustor, there are three regions
in the combustor at the downstream of the radically-staged
 international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (xxxx) xxx
DLE burner outlet: the central zone, the transition zone and
the near-wall zone. The main circulation zone and flame-wall
interaction zone are two regions where combustion oscilla-
tion is easy to be induced. However, strong damping capability
of shear layer in the transition zone is thought to be the reason
for combustion instability getting inhibited somehow at
hydrogen enrichment cases.
Acknowledgment
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support
of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant
NO.51876123) and Shanghai Electric Gas Turbine CO.,Ltd.
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