The industry benefits of the project are as follows:
- It determines how hydrogen addition affects turbulent premixed flame stability and pollutant formation as the burner pressure burner increases from ambient (typical of many boilers) to 30+ bar (typical of industrial gas turbines and some industrial appliances).
- It determines how hydrogen addition affects reciprocating engine performance (efficiency and pollutant formation), including assessing the utility of the Methane Number (MN) as a metric of natural gas fuel quality.
- It develops new and validated chemical models of the combustion of methane/hydrogen mixtures at elevated pressures for use in understanding premixed flame stability, reciprocating engine performance and pollutant formation.
These benefits are significant for CRC participants since this research helps us understand how aspects of hydrogen/methane combustion might limit the performance of the most significant consumers of network-delivered gaseous fuels, and how devices might then be modified or controlled to widen those limits. There are also spill-over benefits into other areas of CRC activity, particularly regarding gas safety, since hydrogen can be significantly less or more safe than natural gas depending on the application, with this relative risk often related to the fuel properties and combustion behaviours that will be studied extensively in this project. |
