Iden­ti­fy­ing and Prevent­ing Vi­bra­tions in Com­bus­tion Cham­bers

Tech­ni­cal phe­nom­e­na in com­bus­tion cham­bers

In ad­di­tion to clean com­bus­tion, the chal­lenges in the com­bus­tion cham­ber of a gas tur­bine also in­clude the pre­ven­tion of ther­moa­cous­tic phe­nom­e­na. These pres­sure os­cil­la­tions are often re­ferred to as com­bus­tion dy­nam­ics, com­bus­tion in­sta­bil­i­ties, also called ther­moa­cous­tic in­sta­bil­i­ties, com­bus­tion dy­nam­ics, pul­sa­tions or hum­ming. They are stim­u­lat­ed by the acous­tic res­o­nance fre­quen­cies of the com­bus­tion cham­ber and occur when the flame cou­ples in one of these nat­u­ral fre­quen­cies. Due to the high en­er­gy re­lease, very high am­pli­tudes of sev­er­al 100 mbar can be eas­i­ly reached.

Com­bus­tion Dy­nam­ics

Po­ten­tial dam­age in tur­bines

These pres­sure fluc­tu­a­tions exert me­chan­i­cal forces on the com­bus­tion cham­ber, the burn­er and tran­si­tion pieces. Due to the very fast grow­ing am­pli­tudes, se­vere dam­age to the com­po­nents can occur with­in sec­onds, even to the point of their de­struc­tion, mak­ing an emer­gen­cy shut­down and re­pair of the gas tur­bine nec­es­sary. This leads to cost­ly out­ages in elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion, dis­trict heat­ing and gas col­lec­tion.

Real-Time Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and Re­ac­tion

Our so­lu­tion for com­bus­tion cham­bers

A mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem that iden­ti­fies these haz­ardous vi­bra­tions in time, ini­ti­ates pro­tec­tive mea­sures and can thus pre­vent cost­ly dam­age.

Our IFTA Ar­gusOMDS sys­tem so­lu­tion of­fers solid so­lu­tions rang­ing from sen­sors to patent­ed early de­tec­tion of com­bus­tion os­cil­la­tions (IFTA PreCur­sor) that allow safe op­er­a­tion of the gas tur­bine through­out its en­tire op­er­at­ing range. Real-time anal­y­sis with a DSP (Dig­i­tal Sig­nal Pro­ces­sor) en­sures re­li­able and fast re­sponse times in frac­tions of a sec­ond. In ad­di­tion, this also al­lows the op­er­at­ing range to be ex­tend­ed, i.e. a deep­er re­duc­tion in the par­tial load range to save gas and a high­er max­i­mum load to in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy, see SIEMENS En­er­gy aSMC.

The IFTA sys­tems are used in this en­vi­ron­ment for com­mis­sion­ing, tun­ing (sum­mer/win­ter tun­ing) and con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol. Due to the con­tin­u­ous long-term stor­age in­clud­ing the high-res­o­lu­tion raw data, the anal­y­sis of un­fore­seen or spo­radic events is also pos­si­ble.

Rec­om­mend­ed Prod­ucts

Com­bus­tion Mon­i­tor­ing

Ap­pli­ca­tion so­lu­tion for mon­i­tor­ing com­bus­tion dy­nam­ics.

IFTA PreCur­sor

Early warn­ing sys­tem for
com­bus­tion dy­nam­ics.

Ar­gusOMDS

Pro­tec­tion sys­tem with di­ag­nos­tics and mon­i­tor­ing func­tion­al­i­ty.

TrendView­er

Fast & in­­­tu­it­ive on­­line/of­f­­line ana­lys­is soft­­ware for ef­­fi­­cient vi­su­al­iz­a­­tion.