Most of gas turbine combined cycle power plants are located in urban areas to provide peak load and district heating. However, NOx(nitrogen oxides) of exhaust gas emission from the power plants cause additional fine dust and thus it has negative impact on the urban environment. Although DLN(dry low NOx) and multi-stage combustors have been widely applied to solve this problem, they have another critical problem of damages to combustors and turbine components due to combustion dynamic pressure. In this study, the effect of different fuel ratio on NOx emission and pressure fluctuation was investigated regarding two variable conditions; combustor stages and power output on M501J gas turbine.

The combustion instability in a dual swirl combustor was investigated experimentally. The effects of thermal power and combustor length on combustion instability were evaluated. Pressure and heat release fluctuation were measured simultaneously. In a conventional combustor, the frequency was decreased with increasing combustor length and decreasing thermal power. However, it showed different results with a dual swirl combustor. In regime 1 where thermal power was relatively high, the results showed same tendency with a conventional combustor. In regime 2 where thermal power was relatively low, the frequency was almost constant with increasing combustor length. It was found that a beating phenomenon occurred with increased combustor length in regime 2 by measuring sound pressure fluctuation. By confirming that beating phenomenon occurs only in regime 2, it is considered that beating phenomenon is the dominant factor of combustion instability in regime 2. This beating phenomenon inside combustion chamber greatly affected to combustion instability. The reason of the beating phenomenon seemed to be the difference oscillating period between main flame and pilot flame.

The energy efficiency of gas turbine using LNG as a fuel has reached to less than about 40% even for the H class gas turbine. To increase the energy efficiency, in theoretical analysis, the maximum value of fuel efficiency can be obtained via the equally large value of the mixing rate and reaction rate in the harmonic-mean type overall reaction rate expression. Even if the delayed mixing rate can be overcome successfully by the strategy of the practically proved lean-burn method, however, the critical problem caused by the retarded reaction rate caused by the excess air has to be solved in order to make any breakthrough of the engine or gas turbine fuel efficiency. To do this, a series of systematic numerical calculation has been made for the evaluation of the lean-burn CH4 flame feature with the addition of small amount of H2 or HHO (H2+1/2O2, water electrolysis gas). To maintain lean burn state, the flow rate of methane was greatly reduced less than 50% of the standard flow rate. The addition of HHO or H2 heating value has increased steadily from 5, 10 and up to 20% of the 100% CH4 flow rate. And investigation of flame characteristics such as peak flame temperature and its location together with the temperature profile has been made through numerical calculation for a gas turbine combustor. For the standard case of 100% CH4 injection, the flame temperature profile was observed to increase steadily from the primary combustor region to gas turbine inlet. This is exactly corresponds to the temperature profile appeared in a heating process with constant pressure assumption in a typical Brayton cycle. However, for the case of co-burning with H2 or HHO with only 40 and 50% CH4 injection, the peak flame temperature appears near the upstream primary region and decreases significantly along the downstream toward turbine inlet. A detailed discussion further has been made for the flame characteristics with the change of added fuel amount and its type. In summary, the addition of the H2 and HHO gas with the reduced amount of the CH4 flow rate results in quite different temperature profile expected from the standard Brayton cycle. Further this kind of flame feature suggests the possibility of high fuel efficiency together with the reduction of the metallurgical thermal damage of the turbine blade due to the decreased gas temperature near turbine inlet.