Environmentally Friendly Update of Gas Turbines on Gas Transmission Lines

Abstract

Currently, more than 1,500 gas turbines are in operation on natural gas transmission lines all over Europe. These turbines do not comply with the requirements for toxic substances content in exhaust gases. Therefore, an environmentally friendly update of these turbines is a hot topic now, especially because these turbines are supposed to remain in operation for another 10 or 15 years. Besides, environmentally friendly update is a specific issue that differs from the development of a new low-emission combustion chamber. The authors participated in environmentally friendly update of more than 500 gas turbines of this design in Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, and Hungary. As new emission limits are expected to be issued in the EU, a new low-emission burner was developed that makes use of a combination of kinetic and diffusion combustion to achieve low NOx and CO emissions. The burner operation in combustion chambers of gas turbines is characterized by a wide range of the coefficient of excess air from idle run to full performance. Therefore, the control of the quantity of primary air is necessary. The paper will describe the main stages of the burner research. Tests were performed on an atmospheric pressure test rig where the basic characteristics were gained. The influence of pressure was examined on a special test rig at 0.75–1.1 MPa of pressure. Tests have confirmed that the required NOx and CO emission limits can be achieved with the designed burner. The low emission burner was used for the combustion chamber of a 6 MW gas turbine. The tests performed on a part of a model burner will be presented and an analysis of measurement results will be given.