A high-temperature catalytic combustor with starting burner

A catalytic combustion system has high potential to achieve low NOx emissio n level. When this combustion system is applied to a gas turbine, the requi red combustor performance must be maintained over a wide range of operating conditions. These conditions range from cold starting to steady-state oper ation. Particularly during the initial stage of cold starting when the cata lyst is not yet activated the catalyst must be heated by some means. This s tudy proposes a new concept of a catalytic combustor with a direct heating system using vaporizing tube for starting burner in order to downsize the c ombustor and reduce the warm-Lip time during cold starts. The effectiveness of this concept is experimentally verified. Furthermore, NOx, CO, and HC e missions during startup can be reduced to a low level so as to achieve ultr a-low pollution of the catalytic combustion over a wide range of operating conditions from cold start to steady-state operation. This paper outlines t he operation concept covering cold start verification of the the concept th rough the experiments with flame visualization in the combustor, spray char acteristics, construction of the combustor and combustion characteristics t hat show low pollution in various operating conditions of the catalytic com bustor.