A Liquid-Fueled Reactor Network Model for Enhanced NOx Prediction in Gas Turbine Combustors

Abstract

This study introduces a liquid-fueled reactor network (LFRN) framework for reduced-order modeling of gas turbine combustors. The proposed LFRN extends conventional gaseous-fueled reactor network methods by incorporating specialized reactors that account for spray breakup, droplet heating, and evaporation, thereby enabling the treatment of multiphase effects essential to liquid-fueled systems. Validation is performed against detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of a liquid-fueled can combustor, with parametric studies conducted across variations in inlet air temperature and fuel flow rate. Results show that the LFRN substantially reduces NOx prediction errors relative to gaseous reactor networks while maintaining accurate outlet temperature predictions. A sensitivity analysis on the number of clusters demonstrates progressive convergence toward the CFD predictions with increasing network complexity. In terms of computational efficiency, the LFRN achieves runtimes of $O(10s)$ on a single CPU core, representing speed-ups generally exceeding 1,000$\times$ compared to CFD. Overall, the findings demonstrate the potential of the LFRN as a computationally efficient reduced-order modeling tool that complements CFD to enable rapid emissions assessment and design-space exploration for liquid-fueled gas turbine combustors.