Fuel divider and ecology system for a gas turbine engine

Abstract

A fuel control system for supplying metered quantities of fuel from a fuel supply (11), through a fuel pump (13), a metering valve (15) and a pressurizing valve (17) to a plurality of engine fuel manifolds (31a, 31b, 33) includes an ecology valve (43) for withdrawing fuel from the engine fuel manifolds (31a, 31b, 33) during cessation of engine operation and for returning fuel to the engine fuel manifolds (31a, 31b, 33) to be burned during normal engine operation. The ecology valve (43) includes a valve housing (44) having a plurality of ecology ports (50, 52, 54) adapted to be coupled to corresponding ones of the engine fuel manifolds (31a, 31b, 33) and a control port (46) adapted to be connected to a corresponding control port (45) of the fuel pressurizing valve (17). A movable piston (63) is supported within the valve housing (44) for reciprocable motion and divides the interior of the valve housing (44) into a variable volume control chamber (71) coupled to the control port (46) and a variable volume fuel reservoir (55) which is selectively coupled to and uncoupled from the ecology ports (50, 52, 54) by the piston (63). Fuel is withdrawn from the manifolds (31a, 31b, 33) seriatim. A fuel flow dividing arrangement is located intermediate the pressurizing valve (17) and the engine fuel manifolds (31a, 31b, 33) for distributing appropriately fuel flow among the manifolds and includes a concatenated pair of two-way splitter valves (39, 41) comprising a first splitter valve (39) distributing the fuel flow between an atomizer nozzle manifold (31b) and the remaining manifolds (31a, 33), and a second splitter valve (41) distributing down stream fuel flow from the first splitter valve (39) between upper and lower manifolds (31, 33).

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.