Abstract: A combustor assembly for an automotive gas turbine engine includes a continuously ignited, pilot flame tube supported on a combustor dome immediately downstream of a prevaporization prechamber with a fuel and air swirler. The pilot flame tube has an air swirler and fuel nozzle supported on an interior bulkhead and is associated with a fuel system that maintains a shielded pilot flame to prevent flame-out of flammable air/fuel mixtures in the main reaction chamber of the combustor; the fuel system supplies greater fuel to the pilot flame tube at engine fuel start and stop to produce an extended flame plume that extends into the reaction chamber to burn residuum of fuel when the air/fuel ratio in the main reaction chamber mixture is below the flammability limit of the fuel.

Abstract: A combustion apparatus for gas turbine engines particularly adapted to reduce emissions to meet automotive requirements. The fuel is laid on the wall of a cylindrical prechamber and evaporated from the wall by combustion air which is introduced through a swirler at the upstream end of the prechamber. The inner surface of the prechamber is artificially roughened by a grid of grooves to improve fuel evaporation. The fuel is laid on the wall from an annular manifold extending around the upstream end of the prechamber through tangential orifices leading from the manifold into the interior of the prechamber. More air enters through entrance ports distributed around the prechamber toward its downstream end. The resulting lean fuel-air mixture is delivered past an annular flow dam at the outlet of the prechamber into a domed combustor wall forming a combustion or reaction zone which is abruptly enlarged from the prechamber.

Abstract: A combustion system with provisions to minimize undesired exhaust products including carbon monoxide, incompletely burned fuel, and oxides of nitrogen. Air entering the combustion zone of the combustion apparatus is mixed with a relatively large amount of recirculated combustion products, preferably about twice the weight of the fresh air entering the combustion zone. The combustion products which are recirculated are cooled by heat exchange with air flowing to a dilution zone of the combustion apparatus where the combustion products and air are mixed to provide the high temperature gas output of the system which is the motive fluid of a gas turbine.The recirculated combustion products are cooled to reduce temperature in the combustion zone and thereby nitrogen oxide formation and the heat extracted from the recirculated combustion products is transferred to the dilution air. The combustion products delivered from the combustion zone to the dilution zone may be diverted ahead of or after the heat exchange.