TY - GEN
T1 - Success of ammonia-fired, regenerator-heated, diffusion combustion gas turbine power generation and prospect of low NOx combustion with high combustion efficiency
AU - Kurata, Osamu
AU - Iki, Norihiko
AU - Matsunuma, Takayuki
AU - Inoue, Takahiro
AU - Tsujimura, Taku
AU - Furutani, Hirohide
AU - Hayakawa, Akihiro
AU - Kobayashi, Hideaki
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (CSTI), the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP), “Energy Carriers” (Funding agency: Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)). The authors thank “Toyota Turbine and Systems Inc.” for the advice on the operation of the micro gas turbine. The authors also thank Mr. Imura, Mr. Okada, Prof. Komiya, and Mr. Kataoka for their support of experiments.
Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright 2017 ASME.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - To protect against global warming, a massive influx of renewable energy is expected. Although hydrogen is a renewable media, its storage and transportation in large quantity is difficult. Ammonia, however, is a hydrogen energy carrier and carbon-free fuel, and its storage and transportation technology is already established. Although ammonia combustion was studied in the 1960s in the USA, the development of an ammonia combustion gas turbine had been abandoned because combustion efficiency was unacceptably low. Since that time, in the combustion field, ammonia has been thought of as a fuel N additive in the study of NOx formation. Recent demand for hydrogen carrier revives the usage of ammonia combustion, but no one has attempted an actual design setup for ammonia combustion gas turbine power generation. The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan successfully performed ammonia-kerosene co-fired gas turbine power generation in 2014, and ammonia-fired gas turbine power generation in 2015. In the facilities, a regenerator-heated, diffusion-combustion micro-gas turbine is used, and its high combustor inlet temperature enables high thermal efficiency of ammonia combustion compared with that of methane combustion. Adoption of the regenerator increased combustor inlet temperature and enhanced flame stability in ammonia-air combustion. Although NOx emission from a gas turbine combustor is high, a Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) after gas turbine combustor reduces NOx emission to less than 10 ppm. This means that the ammonia combustion gas turbine design, abandoned in the 1960s for its unacceptably low combustion efficiency, has performed successfully with regenerator and SCR technology. However, the weakness of these facilities was that they required large-size SCR equipment in order to suppress a high concentration of NOx. Although NOx reduction in the combustion process is desirable, low NOx combustion technology is difficult because ammonia had been thought of as a source of fuel-NO. In the case of premixed ammonia-air flame, there exists a low emission window of NOx and NH3 in a certain equivalence ratio, but combustion intensity is very low because the laminar burning velocity of NH3-air is one-fifth that of CH4-air. This means that, when utilizing the window of premixed ammonia-air flame, scale-up of the combustion chamber or fuel additives for enhancement of flame stability is necessary. This study shows that the addition of H2 is effective for low NOx combustion with high combustion efficiency. In addition, H2 can be easily made from NH3 decomposition. The other option is diffusion combustion. Further research on low NOx combustion is needed.
AB - To protect against global warming, a massive influx of renewable energy is expected. Although hydrogen is a renewable media, its storage and transportation in large quantity is difficult. Ammonia, however, is a hydrogen energy carrier and carbon-free fuel, and its storage and transportation technology is already established. Although ammonia combustion was studied in the 1960s in the USA, the development of an ammonia combustion gas turbine had been abandoned because combustion efficiency was unacceptably low. Since that time, in the combustion field, ammonia has been thought of as a fuel N additive in the study of NOx formation. Recent demand for hydrogen carrier revives the usage of ammonia combustion, but no one has attempted an actual design setup for ammonia combustion gas turbine power generation. The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan successfully performed ammonia-kerosene co-fired gas turbine power generation in 2014, and ammonia-fired gas turbine power generation in 2015. In the facilities, a regenerator-heated, diffusion-combustion micro-gas turbine is used, and its high combustor inlet temperature enables high thermal efficiency of ammonia combustion compared with that of methane combustion. Adoption of the regenerator increased combustor inlet temperature and enhanced flame stability in ammonia-air combustion. Although NOx emission from a gas turbine combustor is high, a Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) after gas turbine combustor reduces NOx emission to less than 10 ppm. This means that the ammonia combustion gas turbine design, abandoned in the 1960s for its unacceptably low combustion efficiency, has performed successfully with regenerator and SCR technology. However, the weakness of these facilities was that they required large-size SCR equipment in order to suppress a high concentration of NOx. Although NOx reduction in the combustion process is desirable, low NOx combustion technology is difficult because ammonia had been thought of as a source of fuel-NO. In the case of premixed ammonia-air flame, there exists a low emission window of NOx and NH3 in a certain equivalence ratio, but combustion intensity is very low because the laminar burning velocity of NH3-air is one-fifth that of CH4-air. This means that, when utilizing the window of premixed ammonia-air flame, scale-up of the combustion chamber or fuel additives for enhancement of flame stability is necessary. This study shows that the addition of H2 is effective for low NOx combustion with high combustion efficiency. In addition, H2 can be easily made from NH3 decomposition. The other option is diffusion combustion. Further research on low NOx combustion is needed.
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U2 - 10.1115/POWER-ICOPE2017-3277
DO - 10.1115/POWER-ICOPE2017-3277
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85029864976
T3 - American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Power Division (Publication) POWER
BT - Boilers and Heat Recovery Steam Generator; Combustion Turbines; Energy Water Sustainability; Fuels, Combustion and Material Handling; Heat Exchangers, Condensers, Cooling Systems, and Balance-of-Plant
PB - American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
T2 - ASME 2017 Power Conference Joint with ICOPE 2017, POWER 2017-ICOPE 2017, collocated with the ASME 2017 11th International Conference on Energy Sustainability, the ASME 2017 15th International Conference on Fuel Cell Science, Engineering and Technology, and the ASME 2017 Nuclear Forum
Y2 - 26 June 2017 through 30 June 2017
ER -
