Hydrogen Combustion for an Industrial Gas Turbine Burner: OH* Chemiluminescence Preliminary Measurements

In order to meet future decarbonization objectives and limit the negative effect on climate change looking at the energy production sector, gas turbine combustion plays a key role to get the "most" and the "best" energy from smart and clean fuels.Gas turbine combustors typically designed and operated with traditional fuels like natural gas and diesel oils, could meet several challenges when facing carbon-free fuels like hydrogen or ammonia; the high reactivity of hydrogen could lead to flashback issues in premixed flames and the nitrogen-bound nature of ammonia could lead to unacceptable levels of exhaust NOx emissions.Understanding the behaviour of an existing combustion system when fuel nature is radically modified, is fundamental since it allows to identify the effort level for a potential design modification of the baseline or to conclude that a jump to a different combustion technology is necessary.In this paper an innovative industrial gas turbine burner has been characterized in atmospheric conditions in terms of NOx exhaust emissions together with a qualitative structure of the flame through OH* chemiluminescence imaging with pure hydrogen or hydrogen/methane mixtures as fuel.The present information represents also a good starting point in validating Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes, especially when non-conventional fuels are involved.