Role of the progress variable in models for partially premixed turbulent combustion

It is shown that if partially premixed combustion is described in terms of a mixture fraction and a progress variable, scalar dissipation terms appear in the transport equation for the progress variable. These terms are essential if not only the fully premixed limit but also the transport equation for a classical diffusion flame are to be recovered. The eddy breakup relationship between mean rate of reaction and scalar dissipation is extended to partially premixed combustion at high Damköhler numbers. Advantages and disadvantages of working in terms of a progress variable rather than a major species mass fraction or temperature are identified and discussed.     

Effects of radiation on spray flame characteristics and soot formation

Two-dimensional numerical simulations are applied to spray flames formed in a laminar counterflow and the effects of radiation on spray flame characteristics and soot formation are studied. N-Decane (C₁₀H₂₂) is used as the liquid fuel, and the droplet motion is calculated by the Lagrangian method. A single-step global reaction is employed for the combustion reaction model. A kinetically based soot model with a flamelet model is used to predict soot formation. Radiation is taken into account using the discrete ordinate method. The results show that radiation strongly affects the spray flame behavior and soot formation. Without the radiation model, flame temperature and soot volume fraction are greatly overestimated. The soot is formed in the diffusion flame regime, and its radiation emission increases with the increase in the equivalence ratio of the droplet fuel. This trend is in good agreement with that of the luminous flame behavior observed in the experiments.     

Multiscalar imaging in partially premixed jet flames with argon dilution

Simultaneous imaging of depolarized and polarized Rayleigh scattering combined with OH-LIF and two-photon CO-LIF provides two-dimensional measurements of mixture fraction, temperature, scalar dissipation rate, and the forward reaction rate of the reaction CO+OH=CO₂+H in turbulent partially premixed flames. The concept of the three-scalar technique for determining the mixture fraction using CO-LIF with depolarized and polarized Rayleigh signals was previously demonstrated in a partially premixed CH₄/air jet flame [J.H. Frank, S.A. Kaiser, M.B. Long, Proc. Combust. Inst. 29 (2002) 2687-2694]. In the experiments presented here, we consider a similar jet flame with a fuel-stream mixture that is better suited for the diagnostic technique. The contrast between the depolarized and the polarized Rayleigh signals in the fuel and air streams is improved by partially premixing with an argon/oxygen mixture that has the same oxygen content as air. The substitution of argon, which has a zero depolarization ratio, for the nitrogen in air decreases the depolarized Rayleigh signal in the fuel stream and thereby increases the contrast between the depolarized and the polarized Rayleigh signals. We present a collection of instantaneous 2-D measurements and examine conditional means of temperature, scalar dissipation, and reaction rates for two downstream locations. The emphasis is on the determination of the scalar dissipation rate from the mixture-fraction images. The axial and radial contributions to scalar dissipation are measured. The effects of noise on the scalar dissipation measurements are determined in a laminar flame, and a method for subtracting the noise contribution to the scalar dissipation rates is demonstrated.     

Effect of initial pressure,temperature and equivalence ratios on laminar combustion characteristics of hydrogen enriched natural gas

In this study, the flame propagation characteristics of premixed natural gas–hydrogen–air mixtures were studied in constant volume combustion bomb by using the high-speed schlieren photography system. The flame radius, laminar flame propagation speed and the flame stretch rate were obtained under different initial pressure, temperature, equivalence ratios and hydrogen fractions. Meanwhile, the flame stability and their influencing factors were obtained by analyzing the Markstein length and the flame propagation schlieren photos under various combustion conditions. The results show that the stretched laminar propagation speed increases with the increase of the initial temperature and hydrogen fraction of the mixture, and will decreases with the increase of the initial pressure. Meanwhile, according to the Markstein length and the flame propagation pictures, the flame stability decreases with the increase of the temperature and hydrogen fraction, and the slight flaws occurred at the early stage; at larger flame radius, the flame stability is more sensitive to the variation of the initial temperature and hydrogen fraction than to that of initial pressure and equivalence ratio.     

Large eddy simulation of dilute reacting sprays: Droplet evaporation and scalar mixing

Large eddy simulation (LES) of turbulent reacting sprays is performed to investigate the interactions of droplet evaporation and subfilter scalar mixing processes. A stochastic method is proposed to generate the subfilter fluctuations in gas-phase reactive scalars in the framework of a mixture-fraction-based combustion model. The subfilter fluctuations of the gas-phase temperature and composition, seen by droplets, are used to refine the estimates of the interphase heat/mass transfer rates. Gas-phase combustion is described by the flamelet progress variable approach. The effects of droplet evaporation on subfilter scalar mixing are considered by solving the transport equation for the subfilter mixture fraction variance. The mixture fraction that is valid instantaneously in both the gas and the liquid phases is adopted and its implication on the modeling of the evaporation source term in the subfilter variance equation is discussed. The modeling approach has been applied to the Sydney dilute reacting sprays. To account for uncertainty in the modeling of scalar dissipation rates in spray flames, a parametric study is performed for the constant in the scalar dissipation model for the subfilter variance equation. The effects of subfilter fluctuations on droplet evaporation are found to depend on the inflow condition of the pre-evaporated gas-phase mixture and the liquid injection rate in the present dilute reacting sprays.     

Extended Shvab–Zel’dovich formulation for multicomponent-fuel diffusion flames

In this paper an extension of the Shvab–Zel’dovich formulation is presented. This extended formulation, based on the Burke–Schumann kinetic mechanism, describes the combustion of multicomponent fuels in a diffusion flame in terms of mixture fraction and the excess enthalpy. Under the condition of Burke–Schumann kinetic mechanism, the multicomponent fuel is burned in a single flame. The model is applied to a diffusion flame generated by the burning of mixtures of n-heptane and hydrogen diluted in nitrogen in a counterflow configuration. Due to the very small ratio of the hydrogen molecular weight to the n-heptane molecular weight, small quantities of hydrogen (in terms of mass) in the mixture does not change significantly the properties related to the mass, like as the total heat released per unit of mass at the flame. However, properties related to the hydrogen mole fraction does change expressively with small quantities, like as the radiative energy loss from the hot region around the flame. The results show the flame properties as a function of the reciprocal scalar dissipation and hydrogen quantity in the mixture. It is observed that, by reducing the reciprocal scalar dissipation, the radiative energy loss decreases and by increasing the presence of the hydrogen, the sensitivity of the flame properties with the reciprocal scalar dissipation reduces. It is also revealed by the results, the effects of the potentiated preferential hydrogen mass diffusion in compositions in which nitrogen and n-heptane are the majority species, and the potentiated preferential n-heptane thermal diffusion in compositions in which nitrogen and hydrogen are the majority species, on the flame properties. Although, this work do not treat the extinction problem, the fluid dynamical results will be properly handled to provide information about the reciprocal scalar dissipation and the Liñán’s parameter necessary for future flame stability analyses.     

Experimental study on flame stability of biogas / hydrogen combustion

The flame stability of biogas blended with hydrogen combustion was experimentally studied in the constant volume combustion bomb. The variations of characteristic parameters of flame instability and effect of pressure and fuel component proportion on flame shape were analyzed. The experimental results show that the flame instability increases with the decrease of equivalence ratio, and the global flame stability decreases with increase of CO₂ fractions. With increase of initial pressure of biogas and hydrogen mixture, Markstein length decreases, hydrodynamic instability decreases, but the thermal mass diffusion instability has no effect. The effect of increase of the hydrogen ratio on flame stability is more obvious, with the increase of initial pressure and hydrogen ratio together, both hydrodynamic instability and thermal mass diffusion instability increase. This research can provide experimental basis for the design and development of biogas blended with hydrogen engines.     

天然气-氢气-空气混合气的层流燃烧速度测定

在定容燃烧弹内研究了常温常压下天然气-氢气-空气混合气的火焰传播规律，得到了不同掺氢比例（氢气在天然气中的体积掺混比例为0％～100％）和燃空当量比（0．6～1．4）下混合气的层流燃烧速率和马克斯坦长度，通过对马克斯坦长度的测量，分析了拉伸对火焰传播的影响。结果表明，随着天然气中掺氢比例的增加，混合气的燃烧速率呈指数规律增加，马克斯坦长度值减小，火焰的稳定性下降。各掺氢比例下，随当量比的增加，马克斯坦长度值增加，火焰的稳定性增强。通过对试验结果的数据拟合，得到了计算天然气-氢气-空气混合气层流燃烧速率的关系式。     

ACCURATE SURFACE TEMPERATURE PREDICTION AT HIGH SPEEDS

Computational tools of turbulent combustion have practical applications for various fields including liquid rocket engines, but some numerical issues are still presented for solving supercritical combustion. In the present study, several of these numerical issues are studied and discussed. Turbulent flow and thermal fields of gaseous hydrogen/cryogenic liquid oxygen flame at supercritical pressure are simulated by a turbulence model. To realize real-fluid combustions, the modified Soave-Redlich-Kwong (SRK) equations of state (EOS) are implemented into the flamelet model with a look-up table as functions of mean and variance of mixture fraction, scalar dissipation rate, enthalpy, and pressure. For supercritical combustion flows, modified forms of the pressure implicit with splitting of operator (PISO) algorithm for solving the pressure-velocity linked equation are introduced. From a comparison of instantaneous temperature distributions for gaseous hydrogen/cryogenic liquid oxygen flame at supercritical pressure, the capability of each method based on the different solution sequence is examined and the effective sequence is explored. The results show that the updated mixture fraction reflected in the pressure correction loop is a critical factor for numerical stability. Also, the relative performance of six convection schemes for supercritical combustion is discussed.     

DNS analysis of partially premixed combustion in spray and gaseous turbulent flame-bases stabilized in hot air

Direct numerical simulations of weakly turbulent-lifted flame bases are examined in the case of both gaseous and spray fuel jet injection. Simplified transport properties and an adjustable single-step chemistry that matches the flame response to equivalence ratio are used. The flames are stabilized within a coflowing stream of heated air. The properties of the zone where burning starts are found to strongly depend on the type of fuel injection. The gaseous flame base is essentially composed of an edge flame, with a large contribution of partially premixed combustion. This partially premixed flame takes two different forms, a nearly stoichiometric propagating kernel and a rich trailing flame whose burning rate is diffusion controlled. The rich premixed flame is parallel to the stoichiometric line, along which a diffusion flame burns the fuel left by this rich trailing flame, up to the very leading edge of the flame base. In the spray case, a nonnegligible amount of oxidizer is entrained within the dilute spray, also leading to an important contribution of partially premixed burning. However, diffusion and premixed burning are found more distributed in space in the spray case than with gaseous injection. A progress variable that is generalized to partially premixed combustion is discussed and the relative contributions of the terms of its balance equation are analyzed from the DNS. A flame partitioning into premixed and diffusion types is then examined and the stabilization zone is decomposed into basic flame prototypes. A subgrid scale flame decomposition is further discussed from a direct filtering of DNS and some a priori tests of subgrid scale modeling are reported.     

Effects of hydrogen addition on the combustion characteristics of diesel fuel jets under ultra-high injection pressures

Many applications use hydrogen addition and high-pressure fuel injection technology to improve combustion performance. In this study, spray atomization and combustion characteristics of a diesel fuel jet, under the injection pressure of 350 MPa, injecting into a constant volume combustion vessel filled with air-hydrogen mixture at the diesel engine relevant condition are investigated by simulation method. A simplified mechanism of the n-heptane (C₇H₁₆) oxidation chemistry mechanism consisting of 26 reactions and 25 species integrated with the Kéromnès-2013 hydrogen combustion mechanism and EDC combustion model are utilized to predict the diesel fuel spray auto-ignition and combustion. The ambient gas is the mixture of air and hydrogen range in volume fraction from 0% to 10%. The ambient temperature and pressure is set to 1000 K and 3.5 MPa, respectively. The results indicate that as the hydrogen volume fraction is 2%, the minimum overall droplet SMD (Sauter Mean Diameter) is approximately 0.95 μm, which is obviously smaller than that of the case with the conventional high injection pressure. In cases that H₂ v/v% larger than 4%, the maximum gaseous temperature increased significantly up to 2700 K. There are two peaks in the temperature growth rate curves as the hydrogen fraction of 8% and 10%. The high temperature at the outer edge of the spray is clearly seen due to its high value when the hydrogen fraction is larger than 4%. The hot reaction layer is the main location of CO formation. The H, OH radicals are formed at the edge of the spray where the temperature is high. The hydrogen species obviously promotes the oxidation and combustion of diesel fuel.     

The internal structure of igniting turbulent sprays as revealed by complex chemistry DNS

A parametric study of spark ignition in a uniform monodisperse turbulent spray is performed with complex chemistry three-dimensional Direct Numerical Simulations in order to improve the understanding of the structure of the ignition kernel. The heat produced by the kernel increases with the amount of fuel evaporated inside the spark volume. Moreover, the heat sink by evaporation is initially higher than the heat release and can have a negative effect on ignition. With the sprays investigated, heat release occurs over a large range of mixture fractions, being high within the nominal flammability limits and finite but low below the lean flammability limit. The burning of very lean regions is attributed to the diffusion of heat and species from regions of high heat release, and from the spark, to lean regions. Two modes of spray ignition are reported. With a relatively dilute spray, nominally flammable material exists only near the droplets. Reaction zones are created locally near the droplets and have a non-premixed character. They spread from droplet to droplet through a very lean interdroplet spacing. With a dense spray, the hot spark region is rich due to substantial evaporation but the cold region remains lean. In between, a large surface of flammable material is generated by evaporation. Ignition occurs there and a large reaction zone propagates from the rich burned region to the cold lean region. This flame is wrinkled due to the stratified mixture fraction field and evaporative cooling. In the dilute spray, the reaction front curvature pdf contains high values associated with single droplet combustion, while in the dense spray, the curvature is lower and closer to the curvature associated with gaseous fuel ignition kernels.     

Scalar predictors of premixed gas ignition by a suddenly-starting hot jet

Hot-jet ignition is usually designed to reduce emissions in lean-burn combustion engines, and has potential in enabling novel pressure-gain combustion. Inspired by our experimental observations related to wave-rotor combustion chamber ignition, this work employs a numerical method to examine the sudden injection of a hot jet into a quiescent mixture of CH₄–H₂-air and the subsequent ignition. The goal is to provide the range of thermo-physical scalars that are supportive of successful ignition. The evolution of scalar fields is evaluated using large-eddy simulation (LES). The temporal evolution of mixture fraction, the squared gradient of mixture fraction (as indicative of scalar dissipation rate), strain rate, and intermediate species are investigated in order to find the appropriate physical conditions which support ignition. Independent distribution of stain rate and squared gradient of mixture fraction, especially in the leading head vortex, shows the necessity of correlated scalar analysis of the ignition process. Experimental and numerical methods are then employed to provide the qualitative and quantitative understanding of ignition process for fuels with two distinct hydrogen contents. Results show the meaningful difference in spatial distribution of local ignition as hydrogen content of the fuel increases.     

DNS investigation on flame structure and scalar dissipation of a supersonic lifted hydrogen jet flame in heated coflow

Direct numerical simulation (DNS) of a three-dimensional spatially-developing supersonic lifted hydrogen jet flame has been conducted in this paper. The scalar structure of the lifted flame is investigated through instantaneous images and conditional means of combustion statistics. And then the scalar dissipation rate and its implications on the flamelet-based combustion modeling are analyzed in detail. It can be found that most of the heat release occurs in the subsonic region. However, distributed reaction pockets exist in the sonic mixing layer due to the rolled up vortices. The magnitude of conditional compression or expansion rate of the fluid presents comparable to the corresponding heat release rate, and takes a great influence on the flame temperature in the high speed reacting flow. The probability density functions of mean conditional and unconditional scalar dissipation rate prove to qualitatively agree with the presumed log-normal distribution, while a little skewed to the higher scalar dissipation rate in the sonic mixing layer. The conditional mean scalar dissipation rate presents to be radial dependent at the flame base, especially in the fuel lean mixture. The DNS results show good agreement with the trends of the flamelet calculations; however, the amplitudes of temperature are far lower than the corresponding flamelet statistics due to finite rate reaction and expansion of the high speed reacting flow.     

Flame characteristics of methane/air with hydrogen addition in the micro confined combustion space

This paper investigated methane/air flame characteristics with hydrogen addition in micro confined combustion space experimentally and computationally. The focus is on the effect of hydrogen addition on the methane/air flame stabilization, the onset of flame with repetitive extinction and ignition (FREI), and the global flame quenching in decreasing continuously combustion space. Furthermore, the effects of hydrogen addition on the flame temperature and the local equivalence ratio distribution were analyzed systematically using numerical simulations. In addition, the effects of hydrogen addition on the concentrations of OH and H radicals, and the critical scalar dissipation rate of local flame extinction were discussed. With a higher hydrogen ratio, the mixing is faster, and the flame is smaller. When the micro confined space is narrower, the heat loss to the combustor walls has a higher impact on the flames. The flames with higher hydrogen ratios have therefore lower peak flame temperatures and lower concentrations of H and OH radicals. The results show that hydrogen addition can effectively widen the stable combustion range of methane/air flames in the micro confined space by about 20% when the hydrogen addition ratio reaches 50%. The frequency and the maximum propagation velocity of FREI flames can be increased as well. The quenching distance of methane/hydrogen/air flames decreases nearly linearly with the increase of hydrogen ratio. This is attributed to the higher critical scalar dissipation rate of local flame extinction in flames with a higher hydrogen ratio.     

Experimental determination of laminar burning velocities and Markstein lengths for 75% hydrous-ethanol, hydrogen and air gaseous mixtures

Hydrogen-rich mixtures generated by the on-board reforming of biomass-derived hydrous-ethanol can be used as a potential alternative fuel (i.e., reformed ethanol fuel, RE fuel). In this paper, outwardly propagating spherical flames were employed to observe the laminar flame characteristics of the gaseous mixtures composed of simulated RE fuel (mixture of 75% hydrous-ethanol and hydrogen) and air in a constant-volume combustion vessel at an initial temperature of 383 K, a pressure of 0.1 MPa, a hydrogen fraction from 0% to 80%, and an equivalence ratio from 0.6 to 1.6. The results show that the unstretched flame propagation speeds and burning velocities increase with increasing hydrogen fraction, especially when the fraction is above 40%. When the hydrogen fraction is less than 40%, the Markstein length and flame instability decrease and increase with the equivalence ratio, respectively, while the reverse holds when the hydrogen fraction is greater than 40%. At an equivalence ratio below 1.4, the Markstein length decreases with increasing hydrogen fraction, indicating a positive correlation between the flame instability and hydrogen fraction. At an equivalence ratio above 1.4, a negative relationship is observed. Finally, it is concluded that a hydrogen fraction of approximately 40% in simulated RE fuel is feasible for spark ignition engines by comparing the laminar burning characteristics of ethanol-air mixtures.     

Experiments on the scalar structure of turbulent CO/H2/N2 jet flames

Scalar and velocity measurements are reported for two turbulent jet flames of CO/H₂/N₂ (40/30/30 volume percent) having the same jet Reynolds number of 16,700 but different nozzle diameters (4.58 mm and 7.72 mm). Simultaneous measurements of temperature, the major species, OH, and NO are obtained using the combination of Rayleigh scattering, Raman scattering, and laser-induced fluorescence. Three-component laser-Doppler velocimetry measurements on the same flames were performed at ETH Zurich and are reported separately. This paper focuses on the scalar results but includes some limited velocity data. Axial profiles of mixture fraction, major species mole fractions, and velocity in these two flames are in close agreement when streamwise distance is scaled by nozzle diameter. However, OH mole fractions are lower and NO mole fractions are higher near the stoichiometric flame length in the larger flame due to the lower scalar dissipation rates and longer residence times. Turbulent flame measurements are compared with steady strained laminar flame calculations. Laminar calculations show remarkably close agreement with measured conditional means of the major species when all diffusivities are set equal to the thermal diffusivity. In contrast, laminar flame calculations that include the normal Chemkin treatment of molecular transport are clearly inconsistent with the measurements. These results suggest that turbulent stirring has a greater influence than molecular diffusion in determining major species concentrations at the flow conditions and locations considered in the present experiments, which begin at an axial distance of 20 nozzle diameters. Analysis of the conditional statistics of the differential diffusion parameter supports this conclusion, though some evidence of differential diffusion is observed. With regard to validation of turbulent combustion models, this data set provides a target that retains the geometric simplicity of the unpiloted jet flame in coflow, while including a chemical kinetic system of intermediate complexity between hydrogen flames and the simplest hydrocarbon flames. Aspects of the measurements, including Favre-averaged profiles, conditional statistics, mixture fraction pdf’s, and departures from partial equilibrium, are presented and discussed in terms or their relevance to the testing of turbulent combustion submodels. The complete data are available on the World Wide Web for use in model validation studies.     

Hydrogen-enriched non-premixed jet flames: Analysis of the flame surface,flame normal,flame index and Wobbe index

A non-premixed impinging jet flame is studied using three-dimensional direct numerical simulation with detailed chemical kinetics in order to investigate the influence of fuel variability on flame surface, flame normal, flame index and Wobbe index for hydrogen-enriched combustion. Analyses indicate that the fuel composition greatly influences the H₂/CO syngas combustion, not only on the important local stoichiometric iso-mixture fraction surface distribution but also on the vortical structures in the flow field. As a result of CO addition to hydrogen-rich combustion, changes of the reaction zone in the flammable layer, shift of peak flame surface density distribution, shift of non-premixed regions, formation of widely populated scalar dissipation distribution rate with respect to tangential strain and reduction of global heat release are all found to appear. In particular, the CO addition induces a micromixing process which appears to be an important factor for the modelling investigation of turbulence/chemistry interaction especially for combustion modelling of H₂-rich syngas fuels.     

Flame structure in fuel rich mono-dispersed sprays

The flame structure and the mechanism of the flame propagation in fuel sprays is studied through a one-dimensional, laminar, monodispersed spray of n-octane fuel. A hybrid Eulerian-Lagrangian method is used in this analyses. The results show that for sprays with small initial droplet radii (e.g., γ_κ = 29.6 μm), the flame structure resembles that of a premixed gaseous combustion. However, as the droplet size is increased, the flame becomes more heterogeneous. When droplet interaction is added to the model the heterogeneity of the flame is enhanced and large fluctuations both in the flame temperature and fuel vapor concentrations are observed.