An experimental investigation on hydroxy (HHO) enriched ammonia as alternative fuel in gas turbine

Abstract

Today, the important challenges with the utilization of hydrogen in power-producing applications (internal combustion engines and fuel cells) are its delivery and storage and these create a big hesitation regarding the application safety. Ammonia, which can be regarded as the most promising alternative fuel to hydrogen, provides the possibility of storage in liquid form at low pressures and high temperatures. This study was carried out to investigate how to compensate the drawbacks of using ammonia as the main fuel in a gas turbine by hydrogen and hydroxy-gas enrichment. During the experiments, propane that is standard working fuel of the gas turbine, neat ammonia, as well as a 10 L/min ammonia fuel enriched with 3 L/min, 5 L/min, and 7 L/min hydroxy gas, were utilized. The results show that hydroxy enrichments cause improvements in the performance data as well as emission values due to the absence of any carbon emissions. When the performance outputs are examined, it has been shown that the power values of NH3 + 3 HHO and NH3 + 5 HHO fuels are 10.98% and 3.65% lower than propane, whereas NH3 + 7 HHO fuel produces 4.12% more power, and the desired performance values are reached. It has been also fund that NOx emissions should be kept under control in addition to the increase in the performance and elimination of the carbon emissions.