Sutton receives Department of Energy grant for fuel research

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Sutton

Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor, Jeffrey Sutton, received a federal research grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy.

Sutton’s project, “Hydrogen Fuel Effects on Stability and Operation of Lean-Premixed and Staged Gas Turbine Combustors,is a collaborative project between The Ohio State University, the University of Michigan and G.E. Power.

The grant comes as part of University Turbines Systems Research (UTSR) program, which focuses on the basic science, questions, and challenges that limit efficient use of gas turbines fuel with pure hydrogen, hydrogen-natural gas mixtures, or other carbon-free hydrogen-containing fuels.

The overall goal of the research is to advance the operation of gas turbines operating on high-hydrogen content fuels.

“A joint experimental-computational program will be conducted to develop a better understanding of flame stability and operational limits when conventional natural gas is replaced by hydrogen and hydrogen-containing fuels such as ammonia,” Sutton said.

The Michigan collaborators, led by professor Venkat Raman, will be tasked with developing a comprehensive set of computational models. Measurements will be performed at Ohio State, and conducted at engine-relevant temperature and pressure conditions, so that knowledge can be directly transferred to industry.

The teams involved with the project are Sutton’s Turbulence and Combustion Research Lab, and Raman’s Advanced Propulsion Concepts Lab. This is not the first time the two have collaborated. Sutton and Raman are also involved on a separate grant project through the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

“We do experiments, and they do the computing. When you get them coupled together you get a fuller picture of the process,” Sutton said.

The collaboration also provides an opportunity for students in the labs to gain exposure to other researchers, experts, and methods.

Together, the teams hope to build a better understanding of the effects of flow properties like momentum, hydrogen content, equivalence ratio, on flame stabilization and flashback.

“As we understand more of the basic physics that underline high-hydrogen content operation, we will be able to produce validated computational fluid dynamics models that can be used subsequently to study design space and operational limits of realistic systems,” Sutton said.

The project’s final target will be to incorporate these tools and understanding into industry.

When the research being done does make its translation to industry, it could have a significant impact on U.S. energy.

With the current administration’s goal of 100-percent clean electricity by 2035, one means to accomplish this is increasing the reliability, efficiency, and performance of hydrogen-based power-generation systems

“Hydrogen is carbon free and provides a pathway for carbon-free emissions if it can be utilized efficiently,” Sutton said.

This project seeks to understand the basic science behind gas turbine combustion of high-hydrogen-content fuels, develop models that can be used by industry to design efficient systems, and transfer these tools to industry.

According to Sutton, this research program can have a direct impact on the next generation of gas turbines, as well as retrofit current gas turbine systems to enable them to operate with higher levels of hydrogen or other carbon-free fuels.

Because of the project’s high level of collaboration between students and researchers at Ohio State, Michigan and GE Power, the impact of the work being done also extends well beyond the results from experiments and computations.

“We are significantly advancing the workforce that can continue to tackle important problems relating to zero-emission technology and clean electricity,” Sutton said

Categories: ResearchAerospace