Ignition and flame quenching in flowing gaseous mixtures

The influence of pressure, velocity, turbulence intensity, turbulence scale and mixture composition on minimum ignition energy and quenching distance in flowing gaseous mixtures is examined experimentally for methane and propane fuels. In some experiments, the nitrogen in the air is replaced by various inert gases such as carbon dioxide, helium or argon, while in others the nitrogen is either partly or totally replaced by oxygen. The tests are conducted at room temperature in a 9 cm square working section through which the combustible mixture is arranged to flow at various levels of pressure, turbulence and velocity. At each test condition, the spark energy required to ignite the flowing mixture is measured for several gap widths in order to establish the optimum gap width corresponding to minimum ignition energy. From analysis of the relevant combustion and heat transfer processes involved, expressions for the prediction of quenching distance in flowing mixtures are derived. Support for the model employed in this analysis is demonstrated by a close level of agreement between theoretical predictions of quenching distance and corresponding values calculated from the experimental data on minimum ignition energy obtained over a wide range of mixture compositions and flow conditions.

A model is proposed for the ignition of quiescent multidroplet fuel mists which assumes that chemical reaction rates are infinitely fast, and that the sole criterion for successful ignition is the generation, by the spark, of an adequate concentration of fuel vapour in the ignition zone. From analysis of the relevant heat transfer and evaporation processes involved, ex­pressions are derived for the prediction of quenching distance and minimum ignition energy. Support for the model is demonstrated by a close level of agreement between theoretical predictions of minimum ignition energy and the corresponding experimental values obtained using a specially designed ignition apparatus in which ignition energies are measured for several different fuels, over wide ranges of pressure, mixture composition and mean drop size. The results show that both quenching distance and mini­mum ignition energy are strongly dependent on droplet size, and are also dependent, but to a lesser extent, on air density, equivalence ratio and fuel volatility. An expression is derived to indicate the range of drop sizes over which the proposed model is valid.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meet Parikh ◽  
Rinrin Saeki ◽  
Rajib Mondal ◽  
Kwangseok Choi ◽  
Wookyung Kim

2020 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 30903
Author(s):  
Beatrice Fragge ◽  
Jérôme Sokoloff ◽  
Olivier Rouzaud ◽  
Olivier Pascal ◽  
Mikael Orain

Motivated by the high demand for an alternative, more reliable, high energy ignition source to facilitate the re-ignition of lean-burn combustion chambers which are necessary to reduce pollutant emissions, a new set-up has been designed to study plasma/microwave sources. The use of a waveguide-based resonant cavity leads to very low power plasma ignition. An example in this paper shows that a plasma at atmospheric pressure can be maintained with less than 2 W input power. Such a performance is possible using the large variety of possible adjustments (resonance frequency, different kind of initiators, etc.) that this versatile set-up offers. To illustrate the wide range of possible studies, another example is given and discussed : minimum ignition energy for an ethanol droplet stream with aluminum and stainless steel initiators. The results show that the initiator material and its surface quality have an influence on the minimum ignition energy, especially for large gaps. Depending on the gap size we can get down to under 10 W entering the cavity to ignite the droplet stream.


Author(s):  
Vassilios Papapostolou ◽  
Charles Turquand d’Auzay ◽  
Nilanjan Chakraborty

AbstractThe minimum ignition energy (MIE) requirements for ensuring successful thermal runaway and self-sustained flame propagation have been analysed for forced ignition of homogeneous stoichiometric biogas-air mixtures for a wide range of initial turbulence intensities and CO2 dilutions using three-dimensional Direct Numerical Simulations under decaying turbulence. The biogas is represented by a CH4 + CO2 mixture and a two-step chemical mechanism involving incomplete oxidation of CH4 to CO and H2O and an equilibrium between the CO oxidation and the CO2 dissociation has been used for simulating biogas-air combustion. It has been found that the MIE increases with increasing CO2 content in the biogas due to the detrimental effect of the CO2 dilution on the burning and heat release rates. The MIE for ensuring self-sustained flame propagation has been found to be greater than the MIE for ensuring only thermal runaway irrespective of its outcome for large root-mean-square (rms) values of turbulent velocity fluctuation, and the MIE values increase with increasing rms turbulent velocity for both cases. It has been found that the MIE values increase more steeply with increasing rms turbulent velocity beyond a critical turbulence intensity than in the case of smaller turbulence intensities. The variations of the normalised MIE (MIE normalised by the value for the quiescent laminar condition) with normalised turbulence intensity for biogas-air mixtures are found to be qualitatively similar to those obtained for the undiluted mixture. However, the critical turbulence intensity has been found to decrease with increasing CO2 dilution. It has been found that the normalised MIE for self-sustained flame propagation increases with increasing rms turbulent velocity following a power-law and the power-law exponent has been found not to vary much with the level of CO2 dilution. This behaviour has been explained using a scaling analysis and flame wrinkling statistics. The stochasticity of the ignition event has been analysed by using different realisations of statistically similar turbulent flow fields for the energy inputs corresponding to the MIE and it has been demonstrated that successful outcomes are obtained in most of the instances, justifying the accuracy of the MIE values identified by this analysis.


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