Heavy-duty Marine Gas Turbine Project. Task 3. Fuel Conditioning System Improvement. Final Report. Volume A. Development of Automatic Fuel Analysis Instrument,

摘要

This document describes part of the work performed within Task 3,Fuel Conditioning System Improvement,of the Heavy-Duty Gas Turbine Development Program,or MARAD Project. The MARAD Project is an integrated effort to develop the heavy-duty gas turbine as an alternate competitive form of marine power generation. This Volume A of the Task 3final report covers the development of the automatic fuel analysis instrument,with work on the total fuel conditioning system being presented in Volume B. Task efforts culminated with the assembly and successful testing of the prototype of the automatic fuel analysis instrument (needed to make the optimum viable automatic marine fuel treatment system a reality). This instrument is based on an RF plasma technique. An aerosol of residual fuel droplets are continuously introduced into an RF plasma (argon) to produce the characteristic spectral lines of the critical trace elements within the fuel. An optical background correction system coupled to a small computer signal processing system extracts the signals and converts them into a direct read-out. (Portions of this document are not fully legible)