Substituting Kerosene: From conventional to hydrogen driven aircraft combustors

TUM.PtX News |

The Chair for Sustainable Future Mobility (Prof. Jocher) is researching various aspects of the operational safety of today's staged aircraft engine combustion chambers with hydrogen as part of a large research network.

Compared to the conventional kerosene operation of aircraft engine combustion chambers, the state of knowledge on hydrogen combustion in the aviation sector is still significantly lower. This applies both to the conceptual level and to the optimisation of promising approaches. The WAKOS project builds on the currently common strategy of air staging with so-called RQL (Rich-Quench-Lean) combustion chambers, through which certain pollutant emissions are reduced. Due to the dissimilarity of the physical and chemical properties of hydrogen and kerosene, the behaviour of innovative injection and staging scenarios suitable for hydrogen combustion must be investigated. On the one hand, the steady-state behaviour, such as mixture formation and heat release distribution, as well as the transient behaviour regarding ignition, start-up and safe shutdown, will be investigated. On the other hand, a great deal of attention is paid to possible thermoacoustic combustion instabilities. The project is part of a larger research network that aims to increase the safety and reliability of modern combustion chamber technologies for future use with hydrogen.