Low NO_x Lean Premix Reheat Combustion in Alstom GT24 Gas Turbines

Reducing gas turbine emissions and increasing their operational flexibility are key targets in today's gas turbine market. In order to further reduce emissions and increase the operational flexibility of its GT24 (60 Hz) and GT26 (50 Hz), Alstom has introduced an improved sequential environmental (SEV) burner and fuel lance into its GT24 and GT26 upgrades 2011 sequential reheat combustion system. Sequential combustion is a key differentiator of Alstom GT24/GT26 engines in the F-class gas turbine market. The inlet temperature for the SEV combustor is around 1000 °C and reaction of the fuel/oxidant mixture is initiated through auto-ignition. The recent development of the Alstom sequential combustion system is a perfect example of evolutionary design optimizations and technology transfer between Alstom GT24 and GT26 engines. Better overall performance is achieved through improved SEV burner aerodynamics and fuel injection, while keeping the main features of the sequential burner technology. The improved SEV burner/lance concept has been optimized toward rapid fuel/oxidant mixing for low emissions, improved fuel flexibility with regard to highly reactive fuels (higher C₂₊ and hydrogen content), and to sustain a wide operation window. The burner front panel features an improved cooling concept based on near-wall cooling as well as integrated acoustics damping devices designed to reduce combustion pulsations, thus extending the SEV combustor's operation window even further. After having been validated extensively in Alstom's high pressure (HP) sector rig test facility, the improved GT24 SEV burner has been retrofitted into a commercial GT24 field engine for full engine validation during long-term operation. This paper presents the obtained HP sector rig and engine validation results for the GT24 (2011) SEV burner/lance hardware with a focus on reduced NO_x and CO emissions and improved operational behavior of the SEV combustor. The HP tests demonstrated robust SEV burner/lance operation with up to 50% lower NO_x formation and a more than 70 K higher SEV burner inlet temperature compared to the GT24 (2006) hardware. For the GT24 engine with retrofitted upgrade 2011 SEV burner/lance, all validation targets were achieved including an extremely robust operation behavior, up to 40% lower GT NO_x emissions, significantly lower CO emissions at partload and baseload, a very broad operation window (up to 100 K width in SEV combustor inlet temperature), and all measured SEV burner/lance temperatures in the expected range. Sector rig and engine validation results have confirmed the expected SEV burner fuel flexibility (up to 18 vol. % C₂₊ and up to 5 vol. % hydrogen as standard).