Gaseous and particulate emissions of a micro gas turbine fuelled by straight vegetable oil–kerosene blends

• The steady state behavior of a MGT at two different load conditions is studied.
• Jet-A1 kerosene and blends with sunflower and rapeseed oils are tested.
• Small percentage of SVO added to Jet-A1 slightly affects MGT emissions.
• PM levels are independent of oil concentration in fuel blends but depend on SVO quality.

The paper reports the experimental results concerning emissions from 30 kWe commercial micro gas turbine feed with blends of straight vegetable oil with fossil fuel. Both gaseous and particulate emissions were measured at full and partial load for blends 10% v/v and 20% v/v of rapeseed and sunflower oils with JET A1 kerosene. The variations of nitric oxide and carbon monoxide emissions were taken into account to evaluate the combustor behavior at different loads and blends. The effects of the fuel composition on the variations, in terms of concentrations and dimensions, of ultrafine – particulate matter were also evaluated.NOx and CO emissions are practically insensitive to the composition of the fuel being the differences within the experimental uncertainty of the instrumentation. This demonstrates a similar overall combustion at both partial and full load for the five fuels used (Jet A1 and four SVO blends). On the contrary, particle matter emission is three times for blends of rapeseed oil and more than fifty times greater for blends of sunflower oil with respect to pure Jet A1. The differences are ascribed to the chemical structure of the vegetable oil tested.

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