Experimental investigation on the self-acceleration of 10%H2/90%CO/air turbulent expanding premixed flame

The self-acceleration characteristics of a syngas/air mixture turbulent premixed flame were experimentally evaluated using a 10% H₂/90% CO/air mixture turbulent premixed flame by varying the turbulence intensity and equivalence ratio at atmospheric pressure and temperature. The propagation characteristics of the turbulent premixed flame including the variation in the flame propagation speed and turbulent burning velocity of the syngas/air mixture turbulent premixed flame were evaluated. In addition, the effect of the self-acceleration characteristics of the turbulent premixed flame was also evaluated. The results show that turbulence gradually changes the radius of the premixed flame from linear growth to nonlinear growth. With the increase of turbulence intensity, the formation of a cellular structure of the flame front accelerated, increasing the flame propagation speed and burning speed. In the transition stage, the acceleration exponent and fractal excess of the turbulent premixed flame decreased with increasing equivalence ratio and increased with increasing turbulence intensity at an equivalence ratio of 0.6. The acceleration exponent was always greater than 1.5.     

Experimental study on the Influence of Hydrogen Fraction on Self-acceleration of H2/CO/air laminar premixed flame

To investigate self-acceleration propagation characteristics of a laminar premixed flame, an experimental study of H₂/CO/air mixtures with various hydrogen fractions and equivalence ratios was conducted. The acceleration exponent and fractal excess were defined to quantitatively investigated flame self-acceleration in the transition and saturation stages. Also, the influence of flame inherent instabilities on the acceleration exponent in the transition stage were investigated. The results indicate that with an increase in the hydrogen fraction, the first and second critical radius decreased, the proportion of the transition (saturation) stage in the whole flame propagation process decreased (increased), and the acceleration exponent and fractal excess of the transition and saturation stages increased. Because of the limits of flame radius and different degrees of pulsation in the saturation stage, the acceleration exponent and fractal excess at the saturation stage measured do not show obvious regularity; the values are less than 1.5 and 0.33, respectively. When the hydrogen fraction in syngas is changed, the acceleration exponent in the transition stage showed a nonlinear decreasing trend with an increase in the effective Le number. The hydrodynamic instability usually increased with a decrease in flame thickness, and the acceleration exponent in the transition stage increased.     

Experimental study on the turbulent premixed combustion characteristics of 70%H2/30%CO/air mixtures

To investigate the effect of equivalence ratio and turbulence intensity on the combustion characteristics of syngas/air mixtures, experiments involving premixed combustion of 70% H₂/30% CO/air mixtures at various equivalence ratios and turbulence intensities were conducted in a turbulent combustion bomb at atmospheric temperature and pressure. The turbulent burning velocity and flame curvature were used to study turbulent combustion characteristics. The results show that the turbulent burning velocity grew nonlinearly as the equivalence ratio increased, while the normalized turbulent burning velocity tended to decrease. When the equivalence ratio was relatively low, the turbulence intensity was a greater determinant of the burning velocity. The normalized turbulent burning velocity increased as the turbulence intensity increased. Re and Da were found to be directly and inversely proportional to u’/u_L, respectively. A linear relationship was observed between u_T/u_L and ln Re. As the turbulence intensity increased or equivalence ratio decreased, the wrinkle degree of the flame front increased, and the maximum and minimum values of flame front curvature increased and decreased, respectively. Meanwhile, the range of the flame front curvature increased gradually. The proportion of components with smaller absolute value of flame front curvature gradually decreases.     

Measurement of the instantaneous flame front structure of syngas turbulent premixed flames at high pressure

Instantaneous flame front structure of syngas turbulent premixed flames including the local radius of curvature, the characteristic radius of curvature, the fractal inner cutoff scale and the local flame angle were derived from the experimental OH-PLIF images. The CO/H₂/CO₂/air flames as a model of syngas/air combustion were investigated at pressure of 0.5 MPa and compared to that of CH₄/air flames. The convex and concave structures of the flame front were detected and statistical analysis including the PDF and ADF of the local radius of curvature and local flame angle were conducted. Results show that the flame front of turbulent premixed flames at high pressure is a wrinkled flame front with small scale convex and concave structures superimposed with large scale flame branches. The convex structures are much more frequent than the concave ones on flame front which reflects a general characteristic of the turbulent premixed flames at high pressure. The syngas flames possess much wrinkled flame front with much smaller fine cusps structure compared to that of CH₄/air flames and the main difference is on the convex structure. The effect of turbulence on the general wrinkled scale of flame front is much weaker than that of the smallest wrinkled scale. The general wrinkled scale is mainly dominated by the turbulence vortex scale, while, the smallest wrinkled scale is strongly affected by the flame intrinsic instability. The effect of flame intrinsic instability on flame front of turbulent premixed flame is mainly on the formation of a large number of convex structure propagating to the unburned reactants and enlarge the effective contact surface between flame front and unburned reactants.     

Analysis of flame surface density measurements in turbulent premixed combustion

In premixed turbulent combustion, reaction rates can be estimated from the flame surface density. This parameter, which measures the mean flame surface area available per unit volume, may be obtained from algebraic expressions or by solving a transport equation. In this study, detailed measurements were performed on a Bunsen-type burner fed with methane/air mixtures in order to determine the local flame surface density experimentally. This burner, located in a high-pressure combustion chamber, allows investigation of turbulent premixed flames under various flow, mixture, and pressure conditions. In the present work, equivalence ratio was varied from 0.6 to 0.8 and pressure from 0.1 to 0.9 MPa. Flame front visualizations by Mie scattering laser tomography are used to obtain experimental data on the instantaneous flame front dynamics. The exact equation given by Pope is used to obtain flame surface density maps for different flame conditions. Some assumptions are made in order to access three-dimensional information from our two-dimensional experiments. Two different methodologies are proposed and tested in term of global mass balance (what enters compared to what is burned). The detailed experimental flame surface data provided for the first time in this work should progressively allow improvement of turbulent premixed flame modeling approaches.     

Numerical study of the effect of H2O diluents on NOx and CO formation in turbulent premixed methane-air flame

The interaction of turbulence–combustion inside the flame field is studied in a Launder-Sharma Low Reynolds Number (LS-LRN) k−ε/EDM framework, while suitable coefficients have been utilized in the code. A finite volume method (FVM) with staggered grids was applied to discrete set of governing equations. SIMPLE algorithm is applied with a fine grid resolution. The convective terms are discretized using Power Law Scheme (PLS). The system of governing equations is solved simultaneously using numerical or TDMA finite difference methods (Tri-Diagonal Matrix Algorithm). By implementation of the Zeldovich and Westbrook-Dryer mechanisms, NO_x and CO concentrations were obtained, respectively. It is illustrated that the implemented LS-LRN-k−ε/EDM method with the new coefficients by shorter runtimes has very good agreement with previously published experimental measurements. Increasing the H₂O diluent at the inlet leads to an increase in the temperature, which increases the NO_x and CO near the entrance, but gradually towards the outlet of the combustion chamber. The energy absorbed by H₂O leads to a severe decrease in temperature and subsequent reduction in the amount of NO_x and CO emissions. With increasing H₂O diluent, changes in temperature are not very significant, while changes in pollutants CO and especially NO_x, are remarkable. With the increase of H₂O diluent, the maximum amount of CO emission displaces towards the inlet of the combustion chamber. However, it should be noted that, at a specific value of H₂O diluent, the length of the combustion chamber should not be less than critical value, causing the exhaust of the pollutant with large volume to the environment. After the critical point, the increase in the length of the chamber has little effect on reduction of the pollutant exhaust. However, by increasing the H₂O diluent, enclosures with smaller length can be utilized.     

Experimental study of premixed syngas/air flame deflagration in a closed duct

The propagation behaviour of a deflagration premixed syngas/air flame over a wide range of equivalence ratios is investigated experimentally in a closed rectangular duct using a high-speed camera and pressure transducer. The syngas hydrogen volume fraction, φ, ranges from 0.1 to 0.9. The flame propagation parameters such as flame structure, propagation time, velocity and overpressure are obtained from the experiment. The effects of the equivalence ratio and hydrogen fraction on flame propagation behaviour are examined. The results indicate that the hydrogen fraction in a syngas mixture greatly influences the flame propagation behaviour. When φ, the hydrogen fraction, is ≥0.5, the prominently distorted tulip flame can be formed in all equivalence ratios, and the minimum propagation time can be obtained at an equivalence ratio of 2.0. When φ < 0.5, the tulip flame distortion only occurs in a hydrogen fraction of φ = 0.3 with an equivalence ratio of 1.5 and above. The minimum flame propagation time can be acquired at an equivalence ratio of 1.5. The distortion occurs when the maximum flame propagation velocity is larger than 31.27 m s^?1. The observable oscillation and stepped rise in the overpressure trajectory indicate that the pressure wave plays an important role in the syngas/air deflagration. The initial tulip distortion time and the plane flame formation time share the same tendency in all equivalence ratios, and the time interval between them is nearly constant, 4.03 ms. This parameter is important for exploring the quantitative theory or models of distorted tulip flames.     

Large eddy simulation of hydrogen piloted CH4/air premixed combustion with CO2 dilution

Large eddy simulation (LES) of constant adiabatic temperature, hydrogen-piloted, turbulent lean premixed methane/air jet flames with varying amounts of CO₂ addition are reported. Constant adiabatic temperature is achieved by increasing the fuel flow rate slightly to account for the higher specific heat of CO₂ compared to N₂. Such flames are relevant to low NOx gas turbines with high hydrogen content fuels and Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR). A newly designed burner called Piloted Axisymmetric Reactor Assisted Turbulent (PARAT) flame burner was utilized. The operating conditions in the experiment were selected to highlight the kinetic effects of CO₂ addition by matching the Reynolds numbers, Lewis numbers and adiabatic flame temperatures. The LES simulations utilize a finite rate chemistry solver with DRM19 combustion mechanism with adaptive zoning and a dynamic structure turbulence model. A five-level adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) improves the velocity and temperature gradient resolution. The LES predicts the experimentally observed increase in flame length with CO₂ levels caused by a decrease in the turbulent flame speed. The computational results also capture the experimentally observed departure from the thin flame limit and a collapse of the root mean square (RMS) versus mean temperature profiles for the three levels of CO₂. The flame structure analysis showed super-equilibrium CO concentrations because of non-equilibrium chemistry effects caused by the external addition of CO₂.     

Experimental and numerical study on premixed hydrogen/air flame propagation in a horizontal rectangular closed duct

Hydrogen is a promising energy in the future, and it is desirable to characterize the combustion behavior of its blends with air. The premixed hydrogen/air flame microstructure and propagation in a horizontal rectangular closed duct were recorded using high-speed video and Schlieren device. Numerical simulation was also performed on Fluent CFD code to compare with the experimental result. A tulip flame is formed during the flame propagating, and then the tulip flame formation mechanism was proposed based on the analysis. The induced reverse flow and vortex motion were observed both in experiment and simulation. The interactions among the flame, reverse flow and vortices in the burned gas change the flame shape and ultimately it develops into a tulip flame. During the formation of the tulip flame, the tulip cusp slows down and stops moving after its slightly forward moving, and then, it starts to move backward and keeps on a longer time, after that, it moves forward again. The structure of the tulip flame is becoming less stable with its length decreasing in flame propagation direction. The flame thickness increases gradually which is due to turbulence combustion.     

Experimental and kinetic study of laminar flame characteristics of H2/O2/diluent flame under elevated pressure

Laminar burning velocity, Markstein length, and critical flame radius of an H₂/O₂ flame with different diluents, He, Ar, N₂ and CO₂, were measured under elevated pressure with different diluent concentrations. The effects of pressures, diluents, and dilution and equivalence ratios were studied by comparing calculated and experimental results. The laminar burning velocity showed non-monotonic behavior with pressure when the dilution ratio was low. The reason is the radical pool reduced with increasing pressure and leads to the decrease of overall reaction order from larger than 2 to smaller than 2, and further leads to this non-monotonic phenomenon. A modified empirical equation was presented to capture the relationship between active radicals and laminar burning velocity. Critical radii and Markstein lengths both decrease with initial pressure and increase with equivalence ratio and dilution ratio. The calculated critical radii indicate that the Peclet number and flame thickness control the change of R_cr. It can be found that Le_eff has a significant influence on Peclet number and leads to the decrease of critical flame radii of Ar, N_2, and CO₂ diluted mixture. Interestingly, the CO₂ diluted mixture has the lowest Markstein length under stoichiometric conditions and a high value under fuel-rich conditions, consistent as the flame instability observed on the flame images. The reason is that the Le_eff of CO₂ diluted mixture increased rapidly with the equivalence ratio.     

Effect of the initial pressures on evolution of intrinsically unstable hydrogen/air premixed flame fronts

Laminar premixed flame front may be wrinkled due to the hydrodynamic and diffusive-thermal instabilities. This may lead to the occurrence of the cellular structure and the self-acceleration. The lean unstable hydrogen/air premixed flame at various initial pressures are studied to clarify the effect of the initial pressure on the evolution of the unstable laminar flame. Linear and nonlinear development stages of the unstable flame are simulated and investigated separately. In the linear stage, the initial sinusoidal wave disturbance on the flame front will still keep its initial configuration. The growth rate increases firstly and then decreases with the increase of the wavenumbers. The effect of the self-acceleration on the unstable flame front will be stronger in the linear stage at the higher initial pressure, since there are larger thermal expansion and constant Lewis number for hydrogen/air premixed flame at higher pressure. There are little discrepancies for the calculated growth rates with those predicted by the revised dispersion relation. The nonlinear stage of the unstable flame propagation could be divided into two stages, the transitional and the stable nonlinear stages. In the transitional stage, the flame front cells splits, merges and moves all the time and the initial wavenumber has a great influence on the cell evolution process. With the evolution of the cell on the flame front, the cellular structure on the flame front will not change greatly with the initial wavenumbers in the stable nonlinear stage. The effect of self-acceleration due to the wrinkling of the flame front at this stage is weakened with the increase of the initial pressure. At the higher pressure, more wrinkled structures with smaller mean curvature are distributed on the flame front. At last, results show that the flame front will propagate faster for the larger computation domain. Based on the fractal theory, the fractal dimension of lean hydrogen/air premixed flame with the equivalence ratio of 0.6 at 0.5 MPa in the 2D domain is obtained and around 1.26.     

Numerical study on CH4 laminar premixed flames for combustion characteristics in the oxidant atmospheres of N2/CO2/H2O/Ar-O2

The freely-propagating laminar premixed flames of CH₄–N₂/CO₂/H₂O/Ar-O₂ mixtures were conducted with the PREMIX code. The effects of the equivalence ratio and various oxidant atmospheres on the basic combustion characteristics were analyzed with the initial pressure and temperature of 1 atm and 398 K, respectively, O₂ content in the oxidant of 21%. The chemical reaction mechanism GRI-Mech 3.0 was chosen to determine the effects of the oxidant atmospheres of N₂/O₂, CO₂/O₂, H₂O/O₂, and Ar/O₂ on the adiabatic flame temperature, laminar burning velocity, flame structure, free radicals, intermediate species, net heat release rate and specific heat of the fuel/oxidant mixtures. The numerical results show that the maximum adiabatic flame temperatures and laminar burning velocities are at Ar/O₂ atmosphere. The mole fractions of CO and H₂ increased fastest at CO₂/O₂ atmosphere and H₂O/O₂, respectively. The mole fractions of CH₃ and H follow the order Ar/O₂> N₂/O₂>H₂O/O₂>CO₂/O₂. In addition, for 4 oxidant atmospheres, the peak mole fraction of C₂H₂ is following the order H₂O/O₂>Ar/O₂>N₂/O₂>CO₂/O₂ and the net heat release rate is following the order Ar/O₂>N₂/O₂>H₂O/O₂>CO₂/O₂ for all equivalence ratios.     

Turbulent flame structure characteristics of hydrogen enriched natural gas with CO2 dilution

This paper investigated the hydrogen enriched methane/air flames diluted with CO₂. The turbulent premixed flame was stabilized on a Bunsen type burner and the two dimensional instantaneous OH profile was measured by Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence (PLIF). The flame front structure characteristics were obtained by extracting the flame front from OH-PLIF images. And the turbulence-flame interaction was analyzed through the statistic parameters. The role of hydrogen addition as well as CO₂ dilution on the features of turbulent flame were revealed by those parameters. In this work, hydrogen fractions of 0, 0.2 and CO₂ dilution ratios of 0, 0.05 and 0.1 were studied. Results showed that hydrogen addition can enhance turbulent burning velocity ST/S_L through decreasing the scale of the finer structure of the wrinkled flame front, caused by the smaller flame instability scale. In contrast, CO₂ dilution decreased turbulent burning velocity S_T/S_L due to its inactive response to turbulence perturbation and larger flame wrinkles. For all flames, the probability density function (PDF) profile of the local curvature radius R shows a bias to positive value, resulted from the flame intrinsic instability. The PDF profile of R decreases with CO₂ dilution, while the value of local curvature radius corresponding to the peak PDF is larger. This indicates that larger wrinkles structure was generated due to CO₂ dilution, which leads to the decrease in S_T/S_L as a consequence. Hydrogen addition increases the flame volume and results in more intense combustion. CO₂ dilution has a decrease effect on flame volume for both X_H2 = 0 and X_H2 = 0.2 while the decrease is obvious at X_H2 = 0.2, Z_CO2 = 0.1. In all, hydrogen enrichment improves the combustion while CO₂ can moderate combustion. Therefore, adding hydrogen and CO₂ in natural gas can be a potential method for adjusting the combustion intensity in combustion chamber during the combustor design.     

Effects of CO2 and N2 dilution on the characteristics and NOX emission of H2/CH4/CO/air partially premixed flame

For the combustion of the mixture of blast furnace gas, natural gas, and coke oven gas in industrial burners, how to improve combustion efficiency and reduce pollutant emission are of significance. To accomplish this, an industrial partially premixed burner with a combustion diagnostic system is used to experimentally reveal the characteristics and NO_X emission of H₂/CH₄/CO/air flame under CO₂, N₂, and CO₂/N₂ (replacing half of N₂ with CO₂) dilution. NO_X emission and flame length, temperature profile, along with CO, CH₄, and CO₂ concentration profiles are analyzed with the three diluents in the fuel stream under different dilution rates (0–32% by volume). Experimental results show that for lean H₂/CH₄/CO combustion, greater proportions of CO₂ in the diluent affect flame characteristics in various ways. These effects include longer flame length, lower highest flame temperature, the highest flame temperature being located farther away from the nozzle, and the highest CO₂ concentration being located nearer the nozzle. Furthermore, results of CO, CH₄, and CO₂ concentrations indicate that chemical reactions in the flame are significantly affected by CO₂ owing to the series reaction CH₄?CH₃→CO?CO₂. Finally, increasing diluents or the ratio of CO₂ in diluents has the benefit of reducing NO_X emission.     

Measurements and analysis of turbulent consumption speeds of H2/CO mixtures

This paper describes measurements of global turbulent consumption speeds, S_T,GC, of hydrogen/carbon monoxide (H₂/CO) mixtures. The turbulent flame properties of such mixtures are of fundamental interest because of their strong stretch sensitivity, and of practical interest since they are the primary constituents of syngas fuels. Data are reported at mean flow velocities and turbulence intensities of 4 < U₀ < 50 m/s and , respectively, for H₂/CO blends ranging from 30% to 90% H₂ by volume. Two sets of experiments are reported. In the first, fuel blends ranging from 30% to 90% H₂ and mixture equivalence ratio, ?, were adjusted at each fuel composition to have nominally the same un-stretched laminar flame speed, S_L,0. In the second set, equivalence ratios were varied at constant H₂ levels. The data clearly corroborate results from other studies that show significant sensitivity of S_T,GC to fuel composition. In particular, at a fixed and S_L,0, values of S_T,GC increase by a factor of almost 2 when H₂ levels are increased from 30% (at ? = 0.61) to 90% (at ? = 0.48). Moreover, S_T,GC in the 90% H₂ case is three times larger than the ? = 0.9 CH₄/air mixture with the same S_L,0 value. An important conclusion from this work is these fuel effects are not simply a low turbulence intensity phenomenon – they clearly persist over the entire range of turbulence intensities used in the measurements. We also describe physics-based correlations of these data, using leading points concepts and detailed kinetic calculations of the stretch sensitivity of these mixtures. These results are used to develop an inequality for negative Markstein length flames that bounds the turbulent flame speed data and show that the data can be collapsed using the maximum stretched laminar flame speed, S_L,max, rather than S_L,0.     

Burning velocity and flame structure of CH4/NH3/air turbulent premixed flames at high pressure

Ammonia is one of the most promising alternative fuels. In particular, ammonia combustion for gas turbine combustors for power generation is expected. To shift the fuel for a gas turbine combustor to ammonia step-by-step, the partial replacement of natural gas by ammonia is considered. To reveal the turbulent combustion characteristics, CH₄/NH₃/air turbulent premixed flame at 0.5 MPa was experimentally investigated. The ammonia ratio based on the mole fraction and lower heating value was varied from 0 to 0.2. The results showed that the ratio of the turbulent burning velocity and unstretched laminar burning velocity decreased with an increase in the ammonia ratio. The reason for this variation is that the flame area decreased with an increase in the ammonia ratio as the flame surface density decreased and the fractal inner cutoff increased. The volume fractions in the turbulent flame region were almost the same with ammonia addition, indicating that combustion oscillation can be handled in a manner similar to that for the case of natural gas for CH₄/NH₃/air flames.     

Effects of hydrogen enrichment on CH4/Air turbulent swirling premixed flames in a cuboid combustor

Effects of H₂-enrichment on structures of CH₄/air turbulent swirling premixed flames affected by high intensity turbulence in a gas turbine model combsutor are investigated by conducting direct numerical simulations. Two stoichiometric mixture conditions, of which volume ratio of CH₄:H₂ = 50:50 and 80:20, are simulated by considering a reduced chemistry (25 species and 111 reactions). Results showed qualitatively different flame shapes and reaction zone characteristics between the cases. For the higher H₂-ratio case, the flame is stabilized both in the inner and outer shear layers. For the lower H₂-ratio case, the flame is stabilized only in the inner shear layer and extinction occurs in the outer shear layer. Comparison of the reaction zone characteristics with unstrained and strained laminar flames in phase space showed that H₂ mass fraction for the lower H₂-ratio case and reaction rate profiles for both cases deviate from the corresponding laminar values. Analysis of fuel species conservation equation suggests that the turbulent transports are substantially influential to determine local and global flame structures. These findings would be useful for designing practical H₂-enriched gas turbine combustor in the aspect of flame structures under high intensity turbulence.     

Experimental study of propane/air premixed flame dynamics with hydrogen addition in a meso-scale quartz tube

The combustion process of propane/air premixed flame in meso-scale quartz tubes with different hydrogen additions was investigated experimentally to explain the flame-wall interaction mechanism. The ranges of different flame regimes were obtained by changing the flow rates of propane and hydrogen. The effects of hydrogen addition, inlet velocity and equivalence ratio were analyzed. The results show that the hydrogen addition broadens the operation ranges of fast flame regime and slow flame regime significantly. The flame propagation speed is in the same order of the thermal wave speed in solid wall for the slow flames. In fast flame regime, the flame propagation speed has an inverse correlation with the inlet flow velocity irrespective of the equivalence ratio. With the increase of the equivalence ratio, the maximum flame speed in fast flame regime decreases gradually, while the maximum flame speed in slow flame regime increases continually. It indicates that rich fuel condition suppresses the fast flame and promotes the slow flame. In slow flame regime, the output thermal efficiency is dominated by the inlet velocity and equivalence ratio.     

Zone conditional assessment of flame-generated turbulence with DNS database of a turbulent premixed flame

Zone conditional two-fluid equations are derived and validated against a DNS database for a turbulent premixed flame. The conditional statistics of major flow variables are investigated to understand the mechanism of flame-generated turbulence. The flow field in the burned region shows substantially increased, highly anisotropic turbulence to conserve mass through a flamelet surface. The transverse component may be larger than the axial component for a distributed pdf of the flamelet orientation angle in the middle of the flame brush. The opposite occurs due to redistribution of turbulent kinetic energy and flamelet orientation mostly normal with respect to the mean flow at the end of the flame brush. The major source or sink terms of turbulent kinetic energy are the interfacial transfer by the mean reaction rate and the work terms induced by fluctuating pressure and velocity on the flame surface. Ad hoc modeling of some interfacial terms may be required for further application of the two-fluid model for modeling turbulence in turbulent premixed combustion simulations.