Effects of Burner Interaction on NOx Emission From Swirl Premix Burner in a Gas Turbine Combustor

Flame interaction between neighboring burners in a gas turbine combustor is investigated numerically for pursuit of its effect on NOx emission from the burners. In a model chamber or liner, EV burners with double cone are installed. Two burners with the same rotating direction of air stream are adopted and the distance between them is variable from 74.2 mm to 222.6 mm by the step size of 37.1 mm. Gaseous methane and air are adopted as fuel and oxidizer, respectively. From steady-state numerical analyses, flow, temperature, and NO concentration fields are calculated in all computational cases to find their correlation with NOx formation. NOx emission is evaluated at the exit of the model chamber with two burners as a function of burner distance and compared with that from a single burner. In all cases of two-burner calculations, NOx emission is higher than that of a single burner, which results from flow interactions between neighboring burners as well as between a burner and a liner wall. NOx emission is affected significantly by flow and flame interactions between them and strongly depends on burner distance. Burner interaction is divided into two regimes of a burner-burner interaction and a burner-wall interaction depending on the distance. In the former regime, NOx emission is reduced as flame interaction between burners is enhanced and in the latter regime, it is also reduced as interaction between the burner and the liner wall is enhanced.