scholarly journals Numerical Study of the Effects of Pressure and Gravitational Acceleration on Soot Formation in Laminar Axisymmetric Coflow Methane/Air Diffusion Flame

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.

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Blanke ◽  
Markus Hagenkamp ◽  
Bernd Döring ◽  
Joachim Göttsche ◽  
Vitali Reger ◽  
...  

AbstractPrevious studies optimized the dimensions of coaxial heat exchangers using constant mass flow rates as a boundary condition. They show a thermal optimal circular ring width of nearly zero. Hydraulically optimal is an inner to outer pipe radius ratio of 0.65 for turbulent and 0.68 for laminar flow types. In contrast, in this study, flow conditions in the circular ring are kept constant (a set of fixed Reynolds numbers) during optimization. This approach ensures fixed flow conditions and prevents inappropriately high or low mass flow rates. The optimization is carried out for three objectives: Maximum energy gain, minimum hydraulic effort and eventually optimum net-exergy balance. The optimization changes the inner pipe radius and mass flow rate but not the Reynolds number of the circular ring. The thermal calculations base on Hellström’s borehole resistance and the hydraulic optimization on individually calculated linear loss of head coefficients. Increasing the inner pipe radius results in decreased hydraulic losses in the inner pipe but increased losses in the circular ring. The net-exergy difference is a key performance indicator and combines thermal and hydraulic calculations. It is the difference between thermal exergy flux and hydraulic effort. The Reynolds number in the circular ring is instead of the mass flow rate constant during all optimizations. The result from a thermal perspective is an optimal width of the circular ring of nearly zero. The hydraulically optimal inner pipe radius is 54% of the outer pipe radius for laminar flow and 60% for turbulent flow scenarios. Net-exergetic optimization shows a predominant influence of hydraulic losses, especially for small temperature gains. The exact result depends on the earth’s thermal properties and the flow type. Conclusively, coaxial geothermal probes’ design should focus on the hydraulic optimum and take the thermal optimum as a secondary criterion due to the dominating hydraulics.


Author(s):  
Susheel Singh ◽  
Sumanta Acharya ◽  
Forrest Ames

Flow and heat transfer in a low aspect ratio pin-finned channel, representative of an internally cooled turbine airfoil, is investigated using Large Eddy Simulations (LES). To achieve greater control of surface cooling distribution, a novel approach has been recently proposed in which coolant is injected incrementally through a series of holes located immediately behind a specially designed cutout region downstream of the pin-fins. Sheltering the coolant injection behind the pin-fins avoids the impact of the cross-flow buildup that deflects the impingement jet and isolates the surface from cooling. The longitudinal and transverse spacing of the pin-fins, arranged in a staggered fashion, is X/D = 1.046 and S/D = 1.625, respectively. The aspect ratio (H/D) of pin-fin channel is 0.5. Due to the presence of the sequential jets in the configuration, the local cooling rates can be controlled by controlling the jet-hole diameter which impacts the jet mass flow rate. Hence, four different hole diameters, denoted as Large (L), Medium (M) , Small (S), Petite (P) are tested for impingement holes, and their effects are studied. Several patterns of the hole-size distributions are studied. It is shown that the peak Nusselt number in the stagnation region below the jet correlates directly with the jet-velocity, while downstream the Nusselt numbers correlate with the total mass flow rates or the average channel velocity. The local cooling parameter defined as (Nu/Nu0)(1-ε) correlates with the jet/channel mass flow rates.


Author(s):  
Thomas Ho¨hne ◽  
So¨ren Kliem ◽  
Roman Vaibar

The influence of density differences on the mixing of the primary loop inventory and the Emergency Core Cooling (ECC) water in the cold leg and downcomer of a Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) was analyzed at the ROssendorf COolant Mixing (ROCOM) test facility. This paper presents a matrix of ROCOM experiments in which water with the same or higher density was injected into a cold leg of the reactor model with already established natural circulation conditions at different low mass flow rates. Wire-mesh sensors measuring the concentration of a tracer in the injected water were installed in the cold leg, upper and lower part of the downcomer. A transition matrix from momentum to buoyancy-driven flow experiments was selected for validation of the CFD software ANSYS CFX. A hybrid mesh with 4 million elements was used for the calculations. The turbulence models usually applied in such cases assume that turbulence is isotropic, whilst buoyancy actually induces anisotropy. Thus, in this paper, higher order turbulence models have been developed and implemented which take into account for that anisotropy. Buoyancy generated source and dissipation terms were proposed and introduced into the balance equations for the turbulent kinetic energy. The results of the experiments and of the numerical calculations show that mixing strongly depends on buoyancy effects: At higher mass flow rates (close to nominal conditions) the injected slug propagates in the circumferential direction around the core barrel. Buoyancy effects reduce this circumferential propagation with lower mass flow rates and/or higher density differences. The ECC water falls in an almost vertical path and reaches the lower downcomer sensor directly below the inlet nozzle. Therefore, density effects play an important role during natural convection with ECC injection in PWR and should be also considered in Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) scenarios. ANSYS CFX was able to predict the observed flow patterns and mixing phenomena quite well.


2005 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. McGarry ◽  
L. Grega

The mass flow distribution and local flow structures that lead to areas of reactant starvation are explored for a small power large active area PEM fuel cell. A numerical model was created to examine the flow distribution for three different inlet profiles; blunt, partially developed, and fully developed. The different inlet profiles represent the various distances between the blower and the inlet to the fuel cell and the state of flow development. The partially and fully developed inlet profiles were found to have the largest percentage of cells that are deficient, 20% at a flow rate of 6.05 g/s. Three different inlet mass flow rates (stoichs) were also examined for each inlet profile. The largest percent of cells deficient in reactants is 27% and occurs at the highest flow rate of 9.1 g/s (3 stoichs) for the partially and fully developed turbulent profiles. In addition to the uneven flow distribution, flow separation occurs in the front four channels for the blunt inlet profile at all flow rates examined. These areas of flow separation lead to localized reactant deficient areas within a channel.


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