Proceedings of the
Second International Energy 2030 Conference,
November 4-5, 2008, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.
A Simplified Model for Pollutant Emission Prediction from a Gas Turbine Combustor
Mohamed Sassi
The Petroleum Institute, UAE
Yasser El-Wahdi
The Petroleum Institute, UAE
Abdullah Ramsey
The Petroleum Institute, UAE
Abstract
Combustion is a very complex phenomenon that includes the interactions between fluid mechanics,
heat transfer, mass transfer, and chemical kinetics. In turbulent combustion, the turbulence-chemistry
interactions make things even more complicated in terms of turbulence and combustion closure models.
One is then forced to simplify the chemical kinetics model to be able to account for better turbulent flow
transport [1], or to simplify the fluid mechanics by using ideal flow chemical reactors that account for
detailed chemical kinetics [2]. Both of these last two approaches rely on complicated computational
models that require high cpu times. This inhibits their use in process simulator software for quick
chemical process case studies.
The objective of this work is thus to develop a quick design tool for gas-turbine combustors that
accounts for the effects of reactant stream splitting, recirculation ratio, and combustion staging, among
other operating conditions on the turbine efficiency and pollutant emissions. We have therefore used the
process simulator HYSYS [Version 3.2] to generate a simplified process flow sheet model for the gasturbine.
A network of ideal flow chemical reactors in series and/or in parallel is used to simulate the
combustor. This model is often complemented by CFD modeling to determine the stream flow rates into
the different reactors of the network. The developed design tool is very efficient and features results that
