Effects of Hydrogen and Helium Addition to Fuel on Soot Formation in Axisymmetric Coflow Laminar Methane-Air Diffusion Flame

Author(s):  
Fengshan Liu ◽  
Francesca Migliorini ◽  
Francesco Cignoli ◽  
Silvana De Iuliis ◽  
Giorgio Zizak

Numerical and experimental studies were conducted to investigate the effects of hydrogen and helium addition to fuel on soot formation in atmospheric axisymmetric coflow laminar methane-air diffusion flame. Soot temperature and volume fraction distributions were measured using a two-dimensional two-color technique. Numerically the conservation equations of mass, momentum, energy, and species in the limit of low-Mach number were solved. Detailed gas-phase chemistry and thermal and transport properties were accounted for. Radiative heat transfer by CO, CO2, H2O, and soot was calculated using the discrete-ordinates method with the radiative properties of the mixture obtained from a wide-band model. Soot was modeled using a two-equation semi-empirical model in which the mechanisms for inception and surface growth are assumed to be PAH coagulation and H-abstraction acetylene addition. Both experimental and numerical results show that helium addition is more efficient than hydrogen addition in reducing soot formation in the methane flame. These results are different from the previous investigations in ethylene flames where the hydrogen addition was found to be more effective in reducing soot formation than helium addition due to the additional chemical suppression of hydrogen on soot. It is suggested here that hydrogen chemically enhances soot formation when added to methane.

Author(s):  
Fengshan Liu ◽  
Wenjun Kong

The effect of the central air flow rate on the structure and sooting characteristics of a laminar double coflow methane/air diffusion flame was experimentally observed and recorded by a digital camera. The double diffusion flame was generated using a modified Gu¨lder laminar coflow diffusion flame burner by introducing an air flow in the centre of the fuel pipe. Numerical calculations of the double diffusion flame at different central air flow rates were conducted by solving the elliptic conservation equations of mass, momentum, species, and energy in axisymmetric cylindrical coordinates using a standard control volume method. Detailed multi-component thermal and transport properties and detailed combustion chemistry were employed in the modelling. Soot formation was modeled using a semi-empirical acetylene based model in which two transport equations for soot mass fraction and soot number density per unit mass were solved. Thermal radiation was calculated using the discrete-ordinates method and a 9-band non-grey model for the radiative properties of the CO-CO2-H2O-soot mixture. The numerical model reproduced qualitatively the experimental observations of the effect of central air flow rate on the structure and sooting characteristics.


2006 ◽  
Vol 145 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 324-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongsheng Guo ◽  
Fengshan Liu ◽  
Gregory J. Smallwood ◽  
Ömer L. Gülder

Author(s):  
Hongsheng Guo ◽  
Fengshan Liu ◽  
Gregory J. Smallwood

The influence of hydrogen addition to the fuel on soot formation in an ethylene/oxygen/nitrogen diffusion flame was numerically studied by simulation of three counterflow laminar diffusion flames at atmosphere pressure. The fuel mixtures for the three flames are pure ethylene, ethylene/hydrogen and ethylene/helium, respectively, while the oxidant is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. A detailed gas phase reaction mechanism including species up to benzene and complex thermal and transport properties were used. The soot inception and surface growth rates were, respectively, calculated based on benzene and HACA (H-abstraction and C2H2-addition) mechanisms. The predicted results for the three flames were compared and analyzed. It is indicated that although the addition of either hydrogen or helium to the fuel can reduce the soot volume fraction, the addition of hydrogen is more efficient. While the addition of helium reduces soot formation only through dilution, the addition of hydrogen suppresses soot formation through both dilution and chemical reaction effects. This conclusion is qualitatively consistent with available experiments. The simulations revel that the chemically inhibiting effect is caused by the decrease of hydrogen atom concentration in soot formation region, due to the displacement of the primary reaction zone, when hydrogen is added to the fuel.


Author(s):  
Fengshan Liu ◽  
Gregory J. Smallwood ◽  
Wenjun Kong

The structure and soot formation characteristics of a coflow laminar methane/air diffusion flame under conditions of constant p2g and mass flow rates of the air and fuel streams were numerically investigated in order to examine the validity of the p2g scaling relationship. The p2g scaling relationship has been used to experimentally investigate soot formation in weakly-buoyant laminar diffusion flames by conducting experiments at reduced pressures. Detailed numerical calculations were conducted by solving the elliptic conservation equations of mass, momentum, species, and energy in axisymmetric cylindrical coordinates using a standard control volume method. Detailed multi-component thermal and transport properties and detail combustion chemistry were employed in the modelling. Soot formation was modeled using a semi-empirical acetylene based model in which two transport equations for the soot mass fraction and soot number density per unit mass were solved. Thermal radiation was calculated using the discrete-ordinates method and a 9-band non-grey model for the radiative properties of the CO-CO2-H2O-soot mixture. The flame structure and soot formation characteristics exhibit strong dependence on the ambient pressure even though p2g and the mass flow rates are kept constant. Significantly more soot is produced with increasing the pressure and decreasing the gravity level. Numerical results clearly demonstrate that the p2g scaling relationship is invalid as far as soot formation is concerned.


Fuel ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 309 ◽  
pp. 122244
Author(s):  
Andisheh Khanehzar ◽  
Francisco Cepeda ◽  
Seth B. Dworkin

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):  
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.


1991 ◽  
Vol 113 (4) ◽  
pp. 946-952 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. K. Kim ◽  
J. A. Menart ◽  
H. S. Lee

The S-N discrete ordinates method is applied to analyze radiative heat transfer in nongray gases. Spectral correlation between the terms in the equation of transfer is considered for black or nearly nonreflecting walls. Formulations to apply the S-N method using a narrow-band or the exponential wide-band model are presented. The net radiative wall heat fluxes and the radiative source distributions are obtained for uniform, parabolic, and boundary layer type temperature profiles, as well as for a parabolic concentration profile. The narrow- and wide-band nongray solutions are compared with gray-band approximations using the same band models. The computational speed of the gray-band approximation is obtained at the expense of accuracy in the internal fluxes and radiative source distributions. The wall radiative flux predictions by the gray-band approximation are satisfactory.


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