Master student (R0), Computational study of a dual-swirl hydrogen burner for gas turbines per el Barcelona Supercomputing Center

Decarbonisation of industrial and transportation systems requires the development of new combustion technologies for gas turbines. Among others, the use of hydrogen as a substitute of fossil fuels is one of the most promising developments, since it directly mitigates emissions of CO (pollutant) and CO2 (greenhouse warming gas). Nevertheless, hydrogen combustion can produce high levels of NOx emissions, and its application in real combustion systems is nowadays hindered by its physicochemical properties and combustion characteristics (low density, high flame speeds, wide flammability limits). Hence, it is necessary to continue developing the technology for taking hydrogen combustion to an industrial level. Among such technologies, swirled burners have been proven effective in gas turbines with kerosene fuel, since they allow a faster mixing and combustion due to higher turbulence levels. The application of these technologies with hydrogen requires, in first place, a proper understanding of the physical behaviour of its combustion in atmospheric conditions before moving to high-pressure systems. Furthermore, the difficulties of obtaining experimental measurements at high pressure combined with the dangerousness of hydrogen, make it difficult to perform experiments providing reliable and extensive data, making numerical computations a fundamental tool for aiding in the understanding and design of these systems.

The objective of this project is to perform high-fidelity numerical computations of an experimental-scale dual-swirl hydrogen combustor, named HYLON, in order to elucidate physical processes governing its combustion. In particular, the multi-regime nature of the combustion process (premixed versus diffusion) will be analyzed, which is known to be a relevant yet unknown aspect of hydrogen combustion. For this purpose, Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of the fluid fields in combination with tabulated chemistry using the Flamelet Progress Variable (FPV) approach for modelling combustion will be used.

The research team that the applicant will be involved is the Propulsion Technologies Group at CASE Department of BSC. The team is a multidisciplinary group with researchers from all disciplines and with strong background in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The team is involved in many EU and industrial projects related to this topic, where the successful activities and the publications on highly ranked scientific journals give the proved expertise.

Key Duties

• Literature review of swirled and hydrogen burners, combustion theory
• Performance of LES-FPV computations with software Alya
• Postprocessing and analysis of results
• Report writing

Data de tancament: Dimecres, 31 Gener, 2024

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