Comparison of Emission Indexes within a Turbine Combustor Operated on Diesel Fuel or Methanol

The emission index (grams of species per kilogram of fuel) field within a regenerative turbine combustor has been mapped using a water-cooled sampling probe. The probe employed a choked orifice to simultaneously determine the local temperature. Derived from measurements are: air-fuel ratio, combustion efficiency, average fuel velocity and fuel distribution factor. Methods of averaging the discrete data are developed.

A comparison of the data obtained when the combustor was operated on each of two fuels revealed that the use of methanol leads to lower nitric oxide but higher carbon monoxide emission than does the use of diesel fuel.