ENERGICO™:

A Revolutionary Software Design

Tool for Gas Turbines,
Combustors and Burner Systems
 Outline

● Challenges faced by today’s burner designers

● Common strategies used to address these challenges
● Announcing ENERGICO
● ENERGICO demonstration
● Summary

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 The Combustor Designer’s Dilemma

•Cost of Experiments
•Mechanism Size
•CFD Complexity
•Cost of Design Mistakes
•Design Complexity
•Fuel Options

•Emissions Regulations
•Fuel Consumption
•Design Cycle Time
•Design Resources

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 Boiler Combustion Challenges

● Burner interactions
– Staging or BOOS
● Low NOx strategies
– Overfire air
– NOx Reburn
– SNCR injection
● Retrofit combustion optimization
● Particulate/Char burnout

CO (ppm, wet)

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 Individual Burner Design Challenges

● Impact of combustion staging strategies

– NOx vs. CO
– Flame length
● Lean Blow Off (LBO) for lean premixed flames
● Fuel composition impacts on ignition and combustion
stability

5
 Flare System Design Challenges

● Full-scale experiments on flares are extremely costly

Flame length

Particulate Formation
and Smoke

Flame stability

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 Costs and Risks Keep Rising

● Cost of experiments can be hundreds of thousands of

dollars
● Difficult to conduct accurate experiments on fuel
changes in full-scale systems
● Impact of poor combustion performance predictions
– Lost sales through excessive emissions margin to meet
guarantees
– Costs to fix non-compliant designs in the field
 Diversion of key resources
 Contract damages

7
 Design Changes May Cause Instability
● Lean-premixed combustion with low
flame temperature slows burn rates
– Lean Blow Off (LBO) when mixing
overpowers burning
– Flashback in premixed systems when
flow velocity is less than flame velocity
– Ignition more difficult with lean mixtures

● Opportunity fuels can have inconsistent

composition and flow rate
– Fuel composition impacts stability
– Burner experiences transient conditions with
rapid load changes

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 Comparison of CFD and Sophisticated
Reactor Modeling
Computational Fluid
Dynamics
– Geometry resolution
– 3-D flow field
representation
– Accurate prediction of mass
flows
– Accurate heat transfer
– Simplified chemistry
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CHEMKIN Reactor
Modeling
– Accurate ignition chemistry
– Accurate prediction of trace
chemical species
 Pollutants
 Soot pre-cursors
– Full chemistry details
– Simplified geometry and
flow field
 Chemistry Drives Accurate Simulations
● Traditional CFD approaches do not accurately predict
emissions and stability

NOx
NOx Measured

Measured

NOx NOx NOx NOx NOx NOx

NOx Under-Predicted by CFD CO Over-Predicted by CFD

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 Introducing:
ENERGICO™
 Designers Say They Need:

● Fewer, better-directed experiments

● The ability to simulate conditions that cannot be

experimentally tested

● A way to complete rapid evaluations of fuel and

operating condition effects

● An accurate applications engineering tool for

emissions and combustion stability assessment.
Specifically, a tool to help companies take advantage
of sales opportunities

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 Equivalent Reactor Networks (ERNs)
Provide Accuracy and Speed
Air

Flame

Air Mixing Recirculation

Post-flame
Pre-mixed
Fuel + Air

Equivalent
Reactor Network

Benefits of ERNs Drawbacks of ERNs

• ERNs use detailed chemistry
to accurately simulate
pollutant emissions
• ERNs can identify regions
where emissions are formed
• Can take expert >1 month
to create by hand
• Difficult to map results back
onto combustor geometry

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 ENERGICO Adds Chemistry to the Design
Flow (Patent Pending)
3-D CFD Solution

Use algorithm to
divide flow field
Automatically
into reactor zones
create ERN

Map chemistry
Improve your results onto
CFD model with geometry view
greater kinetic
understanding

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 Combustor Zones Automatically Created

● Zone creation approach eliminates manual analysis

and errors
● Designer can easily adjust and refine the algorithm to
capture flow field and flame structures
● ENERGICO accurately tracks all flows to ensure
accuracy and speed of ERN creation
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 “Instant” Equivalent Reactor Networks

● Automation supports commercial design timelines

– Creates ERNs in minutes rather than months
– Enables widespread use by combustor designers
● Accurately follows specific set of rules
– Correct-by-Construction ERN synthesis
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 Excellent Visualization of Results
NOx
Identify where NOx
emissions are formed

CO

Identify where CO
emissions are quenched

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 Assess Lean Blow Off (LBO) (Patent Pending)
LBO Index Unstable
● Capture the flame
● Conduct detailed
in-flame chemistry
analysis
– Chemistry from
reaction mechanism
– Mixing from CFD Stable

● Determine how close

flame is to LBO
● Visualize flame within geometry to guide design
modifications

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ENERGICO has Completed a Rigorous
Validation Program on Real Turbine Designs
● Prior to release, RD conducted extensive internal
benchmarking with industry-supplied designs
● Three major gas turbine manufacturers involved in
Program
– Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
– Kawasaki Heavy Industries
– Large United States manufacturer
● Program included validation of ENERGICO on well
understood designs
– Emissions predictions
– Lean Blow Off assessments
● Validation partners represent over 60% of power
generation gas turbine market
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 Sample of ENERGICO Validation Results

Class of Combustor NO CO
Fuel Type
(all CO less than 10ppm) Variance Variance

10MW Less than 10ppm NOx Natural Gas 1ppm 2ppm

25MW 25ppm NOx Natural Gas 2ppm 2ppm

250MW Less than 10ppm NOx Natural Gas 1ppm 2ppm

250MW 25ppm NOx Natural Gas 2ppm 2ppm

250MW 25ppm NOx Syngas 2ppm 2ppm

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 Validation Test Feedback

● ENERGICO reduces CFD-ERN evaluation time by

>90%
– “From 2 years to 2 days”

● Rapid ERN algorithm changes facilitates deeper

kinetic understanding
● Correct-by-Construction approach allows CFD
engineers to consistently employ detailed chemistry
● Energy Equation option provides powerful
comparison to CFD kinetics
● Understanding of ERN results can guide/improve
CFD grid refinement
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 ENERGICO Wins CONNECT Most
Innovative Product Award
● CONNECT, San Diego’s technology and life sciences
accelerator, named ENERGICO as Most Innovative
Product of the Year for Clean Technology

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 ENERGICO Improves CFD Accuracy

● Fast paced commercial environment doesn’t allow

sufficient time for validation
● Application of ENERGICO has identified areas for
improvement in the CFD model
● Compare CFD mechanism against detailed chemistry
results through use of Energy Equation
– Temperatures
– NOx/CO emissions
● Identify regions of the grid that need refinement for
improved accuracy of the results

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Use ENERGICO to Simulate Alternative Fuels

● Compare impacts of fuel composition changes by

manipulating the ERN
– Variation in composition of natural gas
– Process related gas composition changes for IGCC, blast
furnace gas, landfill gas, etc.
● Approach:
– Create a CFD model with the best severely reduced
mechanism possible
– Use full detailed chemistry mechanism in ENERGICO
– Get accurate emissions and stability results with the
alternative fuels

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 Comparison of Applications Engineering
Between CFD and ENERGICO
CFD ENERGICO
● Grid ● Detailed Chemical Mechanism
● Turbulence Models ● ERN algorithm development
– K-epsilon – Filter variable type
(standard, RNG, etc.) – Filter minimum zone size
– LES – Order of filter application
● Combustion Models ● ERN solution
– Non-Premixed – Reactor type (PSR or PFR)
– Premixed – Constant temperature
● Kinetic Mechanism – Energy equation
– Global
– Severely Reduced Both CFD and ENERGICO
● Heat Transfer Models require applications
– Convection engineering and experience
27 – Radiation for accurate results
 Some Common Questions?

● How do I know how to apply the proper algorithm?

● Will I have to calibrate my results to each test case?
– Do I have to know the answer in order to predict it?
● How do I know what reaction mechanism to use?
● Will I need a new CFD case for each new burner
condition?

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 Identifying the Best Algorithm
● Comparing algorithms and energy equation
identifies optimum algorithm for future modeling

29 Draft Joint Reaction Design/GE Energy Turbo Expo 2009 Paper

Fuel Mechanisms - Reaction Design Can Help

30 Draft Joint Reaction Design/GE Energy Turbo Expo 2009 Paper

 ERN Parameter Variation Impact on NOx
(Joint paper with GE Energy)
● Increased Fuel/Air Ratio from single data point
● Experimental data obtained in $250k test, ENERGICO in
2 hours

Nominal Case
based on CFD

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 ENERGICO Addresses Combustion
Challenges
Current Industry Concerns

Burner Sustainable
designs are fuels
becoming introduce
more complex combustion
uncertainty
Mechanisms
become more
detailed to
capture
required
effects

ENERGICO:ENERGICO:
Revolutionary Simulation
Revolutionary Simulation Package Software

• Reduced Need for Physical Engine Testing

• Ability to take Advantage of Opportunity Fuels
• Increased Speed-to-Market for New Designs
• Reduced Field Failures with Capability to
Accurately Simulate Emissions and LBO
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 ENERGICO Package

● ENERGICO Software

● ENERGICO Maintenance
– Dedicated Applications Support

● On-Site Training
– Free in first year of license
– Theory and Functionality
– Hands on training on your applications

● Pre-requisite Software:
– CHEMKIN-PRO

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Thank You