Reduction of pollutant emissions from a rapeseed oil fired micro gas turbine burner

In the past decade numerous studies have been performed on using biodiesel derived from rapeseed oil for micro gas turbines. Much less attention has been devoted to the study of crude rapeseed oil due to the fact that the latter cannot be burnt without modifications in micro gas turbines designed for crude oil derivatives (diesel oil, kerosene, etc.). The series of experiments presented in this study were aimed at examining the combustion characteristics of crude rapeseed oil. The experiments were performed on a burner test rig, which allowed to modify the factors affecting fuel atomization and to measure the emission of pollutants from a gas turbine burner equipped with an airblast atomizer selected for the purposes of the experiment. Measurement results confirmed that by preheating the rapeseed oil and performing the atomization using steam instead of air, the burner can easily be changed to burning crude rapeseed oil instead of diesel oil without increasing the emission of pollutants. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.