Numerical study of the impact of hydrogen addition, swirl intensity and equivalence ratio on methane-air combustion

Hydrogen-blended fuel is a promising resource for future generations of gas turbine engines, due to its capability of reducing carbon-based emissions. This paper presents a numerical study to assess hydrogen-enriched combustion in a laboratory-scale burner operating at a high turbulence level and under lean and stoichiometric burning conditions. Moreover, a wide range of H2 (up to 90 %) is used for enriching CH4-air combustion in combination with two different swirl levels. The results show that a high swirl intensity results in shorter flames, due to the increased turbulent intensity, which reduces the flame surface area and uniformness the reacting zone. Besides, increasing swirl intensity further increase flame temperature for a given H2-blended fuel. Overall, the results suggest that high swirl intensity in combination to lean mixtures is favorable when using H2-blended fuel with high H2 concentrations. The simulation results also demonstrate that considering radiation heat loss is influential, as it yields a reduction of the outlet temperature by not less than 100 K, bringing down NO x emissions by half.