Prediction of Soot Formation Trends in Turbulent Kerosene-Air Diffusion Jet Flames With Elevated Operating Pressure

Author(s):  
Pravin Nakod ◽  
Saurabh Patwardhan ◽  
Ishan Verma ◽  
Stefano Orsino

Emission standard agencies are coming up with more stringent regulations on soot, given its adverse effect on human health. It is expected that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will soon place stricter regulations on allowed levels of the size of soot particles from aircraft jet engines. Since, aircraft engines operate at varying operating pressure, temperature and air-fuel ratios, soot fraction changes from condition to condition. Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are playing a key role in understanding the complex mechanism of soot formation and the factors affecting it. In the present work, soot formation prediction from numerical analyses for turbulent kerosene-air diffusion jet flames at five different operating pressures in the range of 1 atm. to 7 atm. is presented. The geometrical and test conditions are obtained from Young’s thesis [1]. Coupled combustion-soot simulations are performed for all the flames using steady diffusion flamelet model for combustion and Mass-Brookes-Hall 2-equation model for soot with a 2D axisymmetric mesh. Combustion-Soot coupling is required to consider the effect of soot-radiation interaction. Simulation results in the form of axial and radial profiles of temperature, mixture fraction and soot volume fraction are compared with the corresponding experimental measured profiles. The results for temperature and mixture fraction compare well with the experimental profiles. Predicted order of magnitude and the profiles of the soot volume fraction also compare well with the experimental results. The correct trend of increasing the peak soot volume fraction with increasing the operating pressure is also captured.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amit Makhija ◽  
Krishna Sesha Giri

Abstract Soot volume fraction predictions through simulations carried out on OpenFOAM® are reported in diffusion flames with ethylene fuel. A single-step global reaction mechanism for gas-phase species with an infinitely fast chemistry assumption is employed. Traditionally soot formation includes inception, nucleation, agglomeration, growth, and oxidation processes, and the individual rates are solved to determine soot levels. However, in the present work, the detailed model is replaced with the soot formation and oxidation rates, defined as analytical functions of mixture fraction and temperature, where the net soot formation rate can be defined as the sum of individual soot formation and oxidation rates. The soot formation/oxidation rates are modelled as surface area-independent processes. The flame is modelled by solving conservation equations for continuity, momentum, total energy, and species mass fractions. Additionally, separate conservation equations are solved to compute the mixture fraction and soot mass fraction consisting of source terms that are identical and account for the mixture fraction consumption/production due to soot. As a consequence, computational time can be reduced drastically. This is a quantitative approach that gives the principal soot formation regions depending on the combination of local mixture fraction and temperature. The implemented model is based on the smoke point height, an empirical method to predict the sooting propensity based on fuel stoichiometry. The model predicts better soot volume fraction in buoyant diffusion flames. It was also observed that the optimal fuel constants to evaluate soot formation rates for different fuels change with fuel stoichiometry. However, soot oxidation strictly occurs in a particular region in the flame; hence, they are independent of fuel. The numerical results are compared with the experimental measurements, showing an excellent agreement for the velocity and temperature. Qualitative agreements are observed for the soot volume fraction predictions. A close agreement was obtained in smoke point prediction for the overventilated flame. An established theory through simulations was also observed, which states that the amount of soot production is proportional to the fuel flow rate. Further validations underscore the predictive capabilities. Model improvements are also reported with better predictions of soot volume fractions through modifications to the model constants based on mixture fraction range.


2017 ◽  
Vol 140 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anandkumar Makwana ◽  
Suresh Iyer ◽  
Milton Linevsky ◽  
Robert Santoro ◽  
Thomas Litzinger ◽  
...  

The objective of this study is to understand the effects of fuel volatility on soot emissions. This effect is investigated in two experimental configurations: a jet flame and a model gas turbine combustor. The jet flame provides information about the effects of fuel on the spatial development of aromatics and soot in an axisymmetric, co-flow, laminar flame. The data from the model gas turbine combustor illustrate the effect of fuel volatility on net soot production under conditions similar to an actual engine at cruise. Two fuels with different boiling points are investigated: n-heptane/n-dodecane mixture and n-hexadecane/n-dodecane mixture. The jet flames are nonpremixed and rich premixed flames in order to have fuel conditions similar to those in the primary zone of an aircraft engine combustor. The results from the jet flames indicate that the peak soot volume fraction produced in the n-hexadecane fuel is slightly higher as compared to the n-heptane fuel for both nonpremixed and premixed flames. Comparison of aromatics and soot volume fraction in nonpremixed and premixed flames shows significant differences in the spatial development of aromatics and soot along the downstream direction. The results from the model combustor indicate that, within experiment uncertainty, the net soot production is similar in both n-heptane and n-hexadecane fuel mixtures. Finally, we draw conclusions about important processes for soot formation in gas turbine combustor and what can be learned from laboratory-scale flames.


Author(s):  
Q.-P. Zheng ◽  
C. D. Stewart ◽  
J. B. Moss

The difficulties in making spatially-resolved measurements of soot concentration inside practical combustors, which do not rely on sample extraction techniques, are highlighted. Restricted optical access presents the principal constraint to the adoption of established tomographic techniques. A novel hybrid approach, which combines a traversable laser shielding tube and conventional integrated absorption measurement, is demonstrated in two tubular combustors operating at a range of AFRs, inlet air temperatures and pressures. Measurements are reported which have been taken through existing primary and dilution ports and through additional line-of-sight holes drilled in the liner specifically for that purpose. Distinctive radial profiles of soot volume fraction emerge, reflecting the annular development of richer mixtures, which favour soot formation, downstream of the fuel injector.


Author(s):  
Massimiliano Di Domenico ◽  
Peter Gerlinger ◽  
Manfred Aigner

In this work a new soot formation model is used to predict temperature, species and soot concentrations in laminar ethylene-air diffusion flames. The gas-phase chemistry is described by elementary reactions with transport equations solved for any species. The chemical paths yielding to soot are modeled by a sectional approach for Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs). Soot dynamics is described by a two-equation model for soot mass fraction and particle number density. Phenomena like nucleation, growth and oxidation have been included both for PAHs and soot. Moreover, PAH-PAH and PAH-soot collisions are taken into account. Species, PAH and soot transport equations are implemented in the in-house DLR-THETA CFD code. The laminar, ethylene-air diffusion flame investigated experimentally by McEnally and coworkers (2000) is simulated in order to validate the model. An analysis of the main flame’s features as well as the interaction between them and the soot chemistry will be given. A qualitative correlation between local stoichiometric values and soot formation rate is assessed. In order to study the sensitivity of the combustion model to simulation parameters like the inlet temperature and kinetic mechanism, additional simulations are performed. Results are also compared with experimental data in terms of temperature, species mole fractions and soot volume fraction axial profiles.


Author(s):  
B. Manedhar Reddy ◽  
Ashoke De ◽  
Rakesh Yadav

The present work is aimed at examining the ability of different models in predicting soot formation in “Delft flame III,” which is a nonpremixed pilot stabilized natural gas flame. The turbulence–chemistry interactions are modeled using a steady laminar flamelet model (SLFM). One-step and two-step models are used to describe the formation, growth, and oxidation of soot particles. One-step is an empirical model which solves the soot mass fraction equation. The two-step models are semi-empirical models, where the soot formation is modeled by solving the governing transport equations for the soot mass fraction and normalized radical nuclei concentration. The effect of radiative heat transfer due to gas and soot particulates is included using P1 approximation. The absorption coefficient of the mixture is modeled using the weighted sum of gray gases model (WSGGM). The turbulence–chemistry interaction effects on soot formation are studied using a single-variable probability density function (PDF) in terms of a normalized temperature or mixture fraction. The results shown in this work clearly elucidate the effect of radiation and turbulence–chemistry interaction on soot formation. The soot volume fraction decreases with the introduction of radiation interactions, which is consistence with the theoretical predictions. It has also been observed in the current work that the soot volume fraction is sensitive to the variable used in the PDF to incorporate the turbulence interactions.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 3671
Author(s):  
Subrat Garnayak ◽  
Subhankar Mohapatra ◽  
Sukanta K. Dash ◽  
Bok Jik Lee ◽  
V. Mahendra Reddy

This article presents the results of computations on pilot-based turbulent methane/air co-flow diffusion flames under the influence of the preheated oxidizer temperature ranging from 293 to 723 K at two operating pressures of 1 and 3 atm. The focus is on investigating the soot formation and flame structure under the influence of both the preheated air and combustor pressure. The computations were conducted in a 2D axisymmetric computational domain by solving the Favre averaged governing equation using the finite volume-based CFD code Ansys Fluent 19.2. A steady laminar flamelet model in combination with GRI Mech 3.0 was considered for combustion modeling. A semi-empirical acetylene-based soot model proposed by Brookes and Moss was adopted to predict soot. A careful validation was initially carried out with the measurements by Brookes and Moss at 1 and 3 atm with the temperature of both fuel and air at 290 K before carrying out further simulation using preheated air. The results by the present computation demonstrated that the flame peak temperature increased with air temperature for both 1 and 3 atm, while it reduced with pressure elevation. The OH mole fraction, signifying reaction rate, increased with a rise in the oxidizer temperature at the two operating pressures of 1 and 3 atm. However, a reduced value of OH mole fraction was observed at 3 atm when compared with 1 atm. The soot volume fraction increased with air temperature as well as pressure. The reaction rate by soot surface growth, soot mass-nucleation, and soot-oxidation rate increased with an increase in both air temperature and pressure. Finally, the fuel consumption rate showed a decreasing trend with air temperature and an increasing trend with pressure elevation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nemanja Ceranic

Soot models have been investigated for several decades and many fundamental models exist that prescribe soot formation in agreement with experiments and theories. However, due to the complex nature of soot formation, not all pathways have been fully characterized. This work has numerically studied the influence that aliphatic based inception models have on soot formation for coflow laminar diffusion flames. CoFlame is the in-house parallelized FORTRAN code that was used to conduct this research. It solves the combustion fluid dynamic conservation equations for a variety of coflow laminar diffusion flames. New soot inception models have been developed for specific aliphatics in conjunction with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon based inception. The purpose of these models was not to be completely fundamental in nature, but more so a proof-of-concept in that an aliphatic based mechanism could account for soot formation deficiencies that exist with just PAH based inception. The aliphatic based inception models show potential to enhance predicative capability by increasing the prediction of the soot volume fraction along the centerline without degrading the prediction along the pathline of maximum soot. Additionally, the surface reactivity that was used to achieve these results lied closer in the range of numerically derived optimal values as compared to the surface reactivity that was needed to match peak soot concentrations without the aliphatic based inception models.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingshan Sun ◽  
Zhiwen Gan

Abstract The hydrogen addition is a potential way to reduce the soot emission of aviation kerosene. The current study analyzed the effect of hydrogen addition on aviation kerosene (Jet A1) soot formation in a laminar flame at elevated pressure to obtain a fundamental understanding of the reduced soot formation by hydrogen addition. The soot formation of flame was simulated by CoFlame code. The soot formation of kerosene-nitrogen-air, (kerosene + replaced hydrogen addition)-nitrogen-air, (kerosene + direct hydrogen addition)-nitrogen-air and (kerosene + direct nitrogen addition)-nitrogen-air laminar flames were simulated. The calculated pressure includes 1, 2 and 5 atm. The hydrogen addition increases the peak temperature of Jet A1 flame and extends the height of flame. The hydrogen addition suppresses the soot precursor formation of Jet A1 by physical dilution effect and chemical inhibition effect, which weaken the poly-aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) condensation process and reduce the soot formation. The elevated pressure significantly accelerates the soot precursor formation and increases the soot formation in flame. Meanwhile, the ratio of reduced soot volume fraction to base soot volume fraction by hydrogen addition decreases with the increase of pressure, indicating that the elevated pressure weakens the suppression effect of hydrogen addition on soot formation in Jet A1 flame.


Author(s):  
Ryu Tanimoto ◽  
Takuya Tezuka ◽  
Susumu Hasegawa ◽  
Hisashi Nakamura ◽  
Kaoru Maruta

To examine soot and PAH formation processes for rich methane/air and acetylene/air mixtures, a micro flow reactor with a controlled temperature profile was employed. In the experiment for a methane/air mixture, four kinds of responses to the variations of flow velocity and equivalence ratio were observed as follows: soot formation without a flame; a flame with soot formation; a flame without soot formation; and neither flame nor soot formation. Soot formations were observed in low flow velocity and high equivalence ratio. Starting point of soot formation shifted to the upstream side, i.e., low-temperature side, of the micro flow reactor with the decrease of flow velocity. One-dimensional steady-state computation was conducted by a flame code. In high flow velocity, low mole fraction of C2H2 and high mole fraction of OH were observed in the whole region of the micro flow reactor. Soot volume fraction did not increase in this case. On the other hand, in low flow velocity, high mole fraction of C2H2 and low mole fraction of OH were observed at the downstream side of the micro flow reactor. Soot volume fraction increased in this case. Since significant soot formation was observed at the low flow velocity and the high equivalence ratio, experiments with gas sampling were conducted for acetylene/air mixture to investigate temperature and equivalence ratio dependence of soot precursor production in such condition. Volume fractions of benzene increased with an increase of temperature. They were larger at higher equivalence ratio at the same temperature. Volume fractions of styrene increased with an increase of temperature. They were larger at higher equivalence ratio when the temperature is less than 1000 K. However the tendency was changed at 1000 K, styrene volume fraction at equivalence ratio of 7.0 was larger than that at equivalence ratio of 8.0.


Author(s):  
A. Srinivasan ◽  
B. Ellis ◽  
J. F. Crittenden ◽  
W. E. Lear ◽  
Brandon Rotavera ◽  
...  

Synthetic fuels such as Fischer-Tropsch (FT) fuels are of interest as a replacement for aviation, diesel, and other petroleum-based fuels, and the present paper outlines a joint program to study the combustion behavior of FT synthetic fuels. To this end, shock-tube spray and high-recirculation combustion rig experiments are being utilized to study the ignition delay times, formation of soot, and emissions of FT jet fuels. Undiluted shock tube spray experiments were conducted using a recently developed heterogeneous technique wherein the fuel is sprayed directly into the test region of a shock tube. The high recirculation combustion rig is a complete gas turbine system where Syntroleum FT jet fuel was combusted, and soot formation and emission characteristics were observed. Reduction of soot volume fraction and unchanged emissions were observed, in agreement with previous investigations. The fundamental shock tube results were found to be consistent with the observations made in the experimental engine.


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