Effects of Ammonia or Methane Addition on the Combustion Characteristics of a Jet-A Fueled Model Combustor

Abstract: Pollutant emissions from the oxidation processes in jet engine combustion chambers are of great concern due to their significant environmental impact. To reduce pollutant emissions, this study explores the addition of potentially clean-burning fuels, specifically ammonia and methane, to Jet-A fuel mixtures. This research initially examines the impacts of adding small amounts of ammonia or methane to Jet-A, establishing baseline one-at-a-time observations to guide future studies on incorporating ammonia-methane mixtures. We found that there are larger increases in output temperature for methane addition compared to ammonia. Moreover, the NOx emission is 80% higher for methane under the same percentage addition with ammonia. These effects are consistent between the two surrogate fuels used; it can be expected that actual Jet-A will exhibit similar combustion characteristics. Incorporation of methane-ammonia mixtures will be the focus of our future research since methane can compensate for the significantly slower flame speed of ammonia. Keywords: computational fluid dynamics, gas turbine combustor, emissions