Abstract The demand to reduce carbon emissions has prompted research into alternative fuels that can replace conventional fuels like diesel in industrial gas turbines. Among different potential biofuels and e-fuels, methanol emerges as a sustainable and high-performance alternative to diesel for gas turbine applications. It is well established that the fuel physical properties, spray dynamics and degree of atomisation are strongly correlated and affect the engine performance. In this study, Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) was applied on spatio-temporally resolved images to characterise Viscor, here used as diesel surrogate, and methanol sprays of pressure-swirl atomisers employed in Siemens Energy industrial gas turbine (SGT-400) combustors. The methanol experimental results were then compared against Viscor results at analogous operating conditions, including density adjusted atomiser pressure drop and ambient pressures. Results confirmed that the methanol spray cone angle is slightly wider than Viscor at corresponding operating conditions. The POD analysis allowed to identify dominant spatial oscillation modes and characterise them in terms of oscillation amplitude, wavelength and onset distance from the atomiser edge for both fuels. Oscillation wavelengths and maximum amplitudes were found to correlate with Weber number, average SMD and axial jet velocities.
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