The gas turbine industry is a vital driver of innovation, economic growth, jobs, trade and mobility in the EU in both the aviation and power generation sectors. It is a multi-billion Euro high-technology industry whose future competitiveness depends on a new generation of creative engineers with multi-disciplinary skills who can accelerate the development of new innovations needed for flexible, efficient power generation and sustainable aviation. There is a significant and urgent need to move towards zero-carbon operation of gas turbines for power generation using hydrogen as fuel to reduce global CO2 emissions and increase energy security. Unlike renewables, gas turbines burning hydrogen can potentially deliver large-scale power in the short to medium terms and offer an attractive solution to the problem of energy storage. They can potentially also offer zero carbon aviation solutions.
The development of next generation low-emission NOx zero-carbon gas turbines is hindered by unsteady combustion problems that are often only discovered late into development because we cannot yet predict them at the design stage. For reasons of cost and simplicity, we have been trying to solve these problems by studying them in isolation in single flames when, in reality, gas turbines have annular or can-annular combustor chambers with multiple flames. These systems are known to have different stability characteristics that need to be understood.
ANNULIGhT has made significant progress in our scientific understanding of these problems by studying them in annular and can-annular combustor geometries. The main challenges addressed are: i) the occurrence of self-excited combustion instabilities in aeroengines and power generation gas turbines which take the form of azimuthal modes in large pressure fluctuations threatening structural integrity, ii) increased probability of lean Blow-off, which consequently makes iii) ignition and light-around more difficult. These latter two issues are safety critical for aeroengine certification yet very little is understood about the mechanisms which control these processes.
