The first double-cavity pressure relief type spherical flame combustion bomb experimental system was recently successfully developed by IET, with related indicators reaching the international advanced level.
While it’s widely accepted that the use of middle and low heat value fuels in gas turbine is of great strategic significance, research on this field has been always considered as a challenge due to the highly complex and volatile combustion characteristic of the gas. So is the measurement of propagation velocity of the laminar flame, which is an important parameter to characterize the combustion process. However, the experimental system newly developed by IET made a breakthrough in this field and realized the accurate measurement of this parameter even under high pressure due to its innovative design of double-cavity pressure relief structure.
Advantages of the system lie in the following three aspects: 1. High safety coefficient. Due to the double-capacity structure, the total pressure of the system could remain constant, which ensure safety of the system especially under high pressure. 2.Wide pressure range. Compared to existing spherical flame combustion bomb, being all with a single-cavity constant-volume structure and a work pressure lower than 5 atm, the maximum working pressure of the new system is much higher and reaches 40atm. 3. Accurate measurement. Using high speed photography and optical schlieren technique, the spherical flame schlieren images captured during the experiments are clear enough to precisely access propagation velocity of the laminar flame under different components and pressures.
The experimental system was designed for the project "Research on flame propagation characteristics of middle/low heat value gas under high temperature and high pressure", which is funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China, with an objective to optimize the design of combustion chamber of the turbine and ultimately to provide experimental basis and technical support for our IGCC(Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) and CCPP(Gas and Steam Combined Cycle Power Generation System).
