Status of the DOE/NASA critical gas turbine R & T Project

The purpose of the DOE/NASA CRT (Critical Research and Technology) Project at the Lewis Research Center is to provide an R&T data base for utility gas turbine systems burning coal-derived fuels. Coal-derived fuels present difficult problems in combustion (because of the high organically-bound nitrogen in the fuel), and materials (because of the trace metal contaminant levels in the fuels, leading to corrosion and deposition in the turbine hot section). The combustion task includes (1) an effort to model the rich-lean combustion process, to predict NOx emissions; (2) a two-stage flame tube experiment to study the effects of combustion operating conditions and fuel properties on NOx conversion; and (3) scaled combustor tests to evaluate the NOx-reduction potential of several staged-combustion concepts. The materials-corrosion resistance effort attacks the problem on three sides.