Experimental Characterization of Fuel-Air Mixing in a Multihole Tube

The multihole tube is an important component used for lean premixed prevaporized low-emission combustion in micro gas turbines, as it plays a key role in establishing uniform fuel-air mixture before flowing into the combustor. Recognizing that poor fuel-air mixing leads to increased emissions, it is therefore imperative to characterize the extent of fuel-air mixing at the exit of the multihole tube. In the present investigation, mixing characterization experiments were conducted by mapping the distribution of fuel-air equivalence ratios at the tube exit with gas analysis technique. Two different multihole tube configurations were tested and compared using aviation kerosene. Experiments were performed under atmospheric pressure, with an inlet air temperature of 480 K and an overall fuel-air equivalence ratio of 0.6. While the baseline configuration yielded the maximum magnitude of equivalence ratio deviation close to 35% at the tube exit, the modified configuration demonstrated much improved mixing uniformity with the maximum extent of equivalence ratio deviation being reduced to ∼10%. A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulation was also carried out to illustrate the resulting flow field associated with the baseline configuration and suggest the needed configuration modifications for performance improvement. Experimental and computational results indicate that the matching of fuel atomization and flow field is the primary factor affecting fuel-air mixture uniformity. By optimizing the flow rate ratio of the axial jet air in the nozzle section to the swirling jet air in the tube section as well as the axial jet momentum, enhanced fuel-air mixture uniformity can be achieved.