Getting Better at Fuel-Air Mixing

Spatially oscillating jets have been shown to be superior to standard injector nozzles

Stationary gas turbines are used for electric power generation in all sorts of machinery, as well as cogeneration, natural gas transmission, and various industrial processes. The efficiency with which a turbine operates depends on the effective mixing of the liquid fuel with air. Properly atomizing and dispersing the fuel into the air has a direct effect on both fuel consumption and the emission of pollutants like nitrogen oxide.

Spatially oscillating jets have been shown to be superior to standard injector nozzles, although the mechanism has not been completely understood because of its complexity. Now a team of researchers from the Technical University of Berlin and FDX Fluid Dynamix GmbH has numerically modeled the behavior of a jet produced by a fluidic oscillator, and have found that the stream breaks into a wider spray of finer droplets than a straight jet. If widely adopted, spatially oscillating jets hold the promise of drastically increasing efficiency and reducing emissions.