Evaporation of bi-component droplets in a heated, highly turbulent flow

This work aims to understand the phenomena that occur in a combustion chamber where multi-component fuel droplets are injected. Many evaporation models exist but the influence of turbulence on spray vaporization is not yet well understood. This study gives a useful database to improve these models. The objective of the work is to measure the dispersion and the evaporation of bi-component (octane/3-pentanone) droplets and the resulting vapor mixing in a well-known, heated, highly turbulent channel flow. The carrier flow shows high turbulence levels, flat profiles for the mean velocity and the velocity fluctuations. The injected droplets have a large variety of behaviors due to the large polydispersion and to the turbulence. The evolution of 3-pentanone liquid concentration, mass flux, and droplet clusters are described. Mean concentration, fluctuations of concentration, and mixing of the vapor phase are characterized.     

Accurate analysis of multicomponent fuel spray evaporation in turbulent flow

The aim of this paper is to perform an accurate analysis of the evaporation of single component and binary mixture fuels sprays in a hot weakly turbulent pipe flow by means of experimental measurement and numerical simulation. This gives a deeper insight into the relationship between fuel composition and spray evaporation. The turbulence intensity in the test section is equal to 10%, and the integral length scale is three orders of magnitude larger than the droplet size while the turbulence microscale (Kolmogorov scales) is of same order as the droplet diameter. The spray produced by means of a calibrated droplet generator was injected in a gas flow electrically preheated. N-nonane, isopropanol, and their mixtures were used in the tests. The generalized scattering imaging technique was applied to simultaneously determine size, velocity, and spatial location of the droplets carried by the turbulent flow in the quartz tube. The spray evaporation was computed using a Lagrangian particle solver coupled to a gas-phase solver. Computations of spray mean diameter and droplet size distributions at different locations along the pipe compare very favorably with the measurement results. This combined research tool enabled further investigation concerning the influencing parameters upon the evaporation process such as the turbulence, droplet internal mixing, and liquid-phase thermophysical properties.     

Acetone Droplet Behavior in Reacting and Non Reacting Turbulent Flow

Acetone droplet characteristics in reacting and non-reacting turbulent flow are predicted and compared to experimental data. Investigations are conducted to study the effects of surrounding environment properties on the velocities, dispersion, and evaporation of a relatively volatile spray fuel that featured a wide range of Stokes numbers. The simulations are performed in the framework of Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes equations along with the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach in which 12 different classes of the dispersed phase. The phase transition is modeled by the Langmuir-Knudsen law that accounts for non equilibrium effects based on a consistent determination of the molar mass fraction on the droplet surfaces. For the droplet dispersion, the Markov sequence model is improved by adding a correction drift term to the fluid fluctuation velocity at the parcel position along the droplet trajectory. This correction term aimed at accounting for the non-homogeneity effects in the turbulent flow. The combustion is captured using the Bray-Moss-Libby model that is extended to account for the partially premixed spray combustion. The chemistry is described with the flamelet model using a recent detailed reaction mechanism that involves 84 species and 409 reactions for which the Lewis number is not set to the unity. Mean droplet velocities for reacting and non-reacting test cases are compared with experimental data. Good agreement is observed. The spray is interacting with the nozzle edge developing new classes and relatively dense region. Hence the RMS-velocities close to the nozzle exit plan demonstrate discrepancies. The droplets group combustion effect is found to be important in the modeling of the burning velocity which influences the flame propagation. Reasonable agreements between the numerical and the experimental results are also observed in the spray flux and temperature profiles.     

Effects of Turbulence, Evaporation and Heat Release on the Dispersion of Droplets in Dilute Spray Jets and Flames

The dispersion characteristics of a selection of non-evaporating non-reacting, evaporating non-reacting, and reacting dilute spray jets issuing in ambient air (Gounder et al, Combust Sci Technol 182:702–715, 2010; Masri and Gounder, Combust Flame 159:3372–3397, 2010) and in a hot coflow (Oloughlin and Masri, Flow Turbul Combust 89:13–35, 2012) are analysed. Other than the cases found in those contributions, two additional sprays of kerosene have been investigated in order to systematically study the effects of evaporation. The burners are well designed such that boundary conditions may be accurately measured for use in numerical simulations. The dynamics and dispersion characteristics are analysed by conditioning results on the droplet Stokes numbers and by systematically investigating changes in dispersion and dynamics as a function of carrier air velocity, liquid loading, ignition method, and location within the flame or spray jet. The tendency for droplet dispersion defined by the ratio of radial rms velocity to axial mean velocity varies significantly between reacting and non-reacting flows. However, dispersion is found to be largely unaffected by evaporation. The total particle concentration, or number density of droplets within the spray has also been used as a direct measure of spray dispersion with the effect of evaporation on a turbulent polydisperse spray being isolated by investigating acetone and kerosene sprays with similar boundary conditions. The rate of change of droplet size with radial position is almost identical for the kerosene and acetone cases. The dispersion characteristics, closely related to the ‘fan spreading’ phenomenon are dependant on the carrier air velocity and axial location within the spray.     

Modeling Turbulent Droplet Motion in Vaporizing Sprays

The present article is concerned with the influence of turbulent gas-velocity fluctuations on both droplet dispersion and droplet-gas slip velocity in the context of spray simulation. The role of turbulence in generating slip and thus enhancing interphase heat and mass transfer has so far received little attention and is investigated in this work. A model for turbulent gas-velocity fluctuations along droplet trajectories is presented and is first tuned to reproduce elementary dispersion phenomena. It is then shown to give good results for more general dispersion problems as well as for slip velocities. As a fundamental source of information and for the purpose of model validation and comparison, direct numerical simulation (DNS) of droplet motion in homogeneous isotropic steady turbulence (HIST) is used. Dispersion of “injected” droplets (i.e. droplets under the influence of drift due to high injection velocity) as well as slip velocities for linear and nonlinear droplet drag are studied, and reasonable agreement is found with the model. The distributions of the slip velocity are found to be very similar for linear and highly nonlinear drag law. The present model is also used to investigate the influence of turbulence on droplet penetration. Comparison is made with an eddy-interaction model (the KIVA-2 model), which reveals various weaknesses of this model, in particular the underprediction of average slip velocity. The influence of slip due to turbulence on vaporization is shown for a fuel spray injected into a premix gas-turbine combustor. The classical eddy-interaction model is seen to underestimate the rate of vaporization due to the underprediction of slip. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Analysis of Mixing Models for use in Simulations of Turbulent Spray Combustion

The present study concerns the investigation of different mixing models for use in the transported probability density function (PDF) modeling of turbulent (reacting) spray flows. The modeling of the turbulent mixing and other characteristic scalar variables such as gas enthalpy using transported (joint) PDFs has become an important method to describe turbulent (reacting) spray flows since the evaporation process causes the PDF of the mixture fraction to deviate from the widely used β function, which is typically used in models for turbulent gas flows. In the PDF transport equation, the molecular mixing does not appear in closed form so that modeling strategies are required. For gas combustion, the interaction-by-exchange-with-the-mean (IEM) model, the modified Curl (MC) model, and the Euclidean minimum spanning tree (EMST) models are used. More recently, a new mixing model, the PSP model, which is based on parameterized scalar profiles has been developed. The present study focuses on the use and analysis of the IEM, MC and PSP models for turbulent spray flames. For this purpose, the models are reconsidered with respect to the evaporation process that must be included and evaluated if spray combustion is considered. For model evaluation, turbulent ethanol/air spray flames are simulated, and the results are compared to experimental data by A. Masri, University of Sydney, Australia.     

An experimental investigation of droplet evaporation and coalescence in a simple jet flow

An experimental study of a simple jet flow, which contains a dispersion of fine droplets, has been carried out in order to investigate the effect of turbulence, evaporation and coalescence on the droplet size distributions within the jet. Very little evaporation occurs in the potential core of the jet, while in the far-field, where the potential core has vanished and the droplets disperse more readily, evaporation occurs predominantly in the outer portions of the spray. Evidently, turbulence enhances the evaporation rate of droplets at the edges of the spray, and fresh air entrained from the outer regions increases the evaporative driving force. Coalescence has also been observed within the spray, although this effect is rather subtle compared to the evaporation effect in the dilute jets investigated here. Nevertheless, sufficient measurements have been taken to validate, at least partially, any coalescence models, in addition to any turbulence and evaporation models for dilute poly-disperse sprays.     

Flow characteristics of a large-size pressure-atomized spray using DTV

The purpose of this study is to characterize the atomization of a jet of water sprayed into the air at high velocity through a commercial nozzle widely used for sprinkler irrigation. The typical diameter of the droplets present in the spray is in the range of several tens of micrometers to several millimeters. They are visualized by ombroscopy. A specific Droplet Tracking Velocimetry (DTV) technique is developed to estimate the size and velocity of these highly polydispersed droplets that are distinctly non spherical. This analysis is performed from the rupture of the liquid core region (about a distance of 550 nozzle diameters) to the dispersed zone (about a distance of 900 nozzle diameters). With this technique, we obtain joint size-velocity measurements that are rarely produced. Especially two velocity components and also a large diameter range are characterized at the same time; while with other techniques, such as Particle Doppler Anemometry (PDA), the diameter range is quite reduced and requires specific settings. Additional measurements of the liquid volume fraction are performed using a single mode fiber-optic probe. In the light of our experimental data, it appears that the turbulent droplet motion in the spray is strongly anisotropic. This anisotropy is quite unexpected because other studies on sprays (generally concerned with engine applications) show a relatively low anisotropy. We attribute this increase of anisotropy to the fact that, for this type of spray, the droplet relaxation time is long in comparison to the characteristic time of the turbulence and that biggest droplets are still submitted to atomization process. This strong anisotropy is responsible for the poor radial dispersion of the spray.     

Effect of Droplet Size and Atomization on Spray Formation: A Priori Study Using Large-Eddy Simulation

The paper is mainly focused to the vast number of researchers who work within direct injection (DI) engine fuel spray simulations. The most common simulation framework today within the community is the Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) approach together with the Lagrangian Particle Tracking (LPT) method. In fact, this study is one of the first studies where high resolution LES/LPT diesel spray modeling is considered. The potential of LES to deepen the present day multidimensional LPT fuel spray simulations is discussed. Spray evolution is studied far from an injector by modeling a spray as a particle laden jet (PLJ). The effect of d on mixing in non-atomizing and atomizing sprays is thoroughly investigated at jet inlet Reynolds number Re?=?10⁴ and Mach number Ma?=?0.3. Based on and justified by rather recent and also quite old ideas, novel and compact views on droplet breakup in turbulent flows are pointed out from the literature. We use LES/LPT to illustrate that even in a low Weber number flow (We?<?13) the droplet breakup modeling may need considerable attention in contrast to what is typically assumed in the present-day breakup models. LES and LPT techniques are first applied to essentially confirm certain expected droplet size effects on spray shape in non-atomizing monodisperse sprays. In the simulations LES e.g. produces an expected turbulent dispersion pattern that depends on droplet diameter (d) without a droplet dispersion model in contrast to RANS. A new compact droplet breakup model is formulated and tested for droplets that break with a natural resonance time rate according to the Poisson process. As a result of the study: 1) the analysis gives a rigorous and enriching proof of currently existing views on droplet size effects on mixing, and 2) the presented a priori analysis points out the importance of modeling the resonance breakup even at a low We.     

Drag coefficients of spherical liquid droplets Part 2: Turbulent gaseous fields

The drag of non-evaporating, spherical, liquid droplets was measured in turbulent flow fields at parametric ranges relevant to spray combustion, characterized by the droplet Reynolds number, and the intensity and spatial scales of turbulence. The experimental apparatus comprised a wind-tunnel and a piezo-electric droplet generator. The procedure was to inject water droplets of uniform size co-currently and continuously with vertical turbulent air flows while droplet velocity was measured at different elevations using laser-Doppler velocimetry. Turbulence was characterized using hot-wire anemometry prior to droplet injection. Drag coefficients were calculated using these main measurements and the law of conservation of mechanical energy. Reynolds numbers were investigated in the range 10–100, in terms of the equivalent spherical diameter of a droplet, and the mean relative speed between the ambient gaseous field and the droplets. Weber numbers were much less than unity so droplets were effectively spherical. Relative intensities of turbulence were investigated in the range 20–65 percent, in terms of the mean relative speed. Spatial scales of turbulence were large in comparison to the droplets; the ratio between the spatial integral scale and the droplet diameter was in the range 11–38, and the Kolmogorov scale was comparable in size or smaller than the droplet diameter. Experimental data showed that the drag in turbulent fields under these conditions is not significantly different than that of solid spheres in a quiescent field at the same Reynolds number.The financial support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Manufacturing Research Corporation of Ontario is gratefully acknowledged.     

A detailed experimental investigation of well-defined,turbulent evaporating spray jets of acetone

This paper aims at investigating the detailed structure of turbulent non-reacting dilute spray flows using advanced laser diagnostics. A simple spray jet nozzle is designed to produce a two-phase slender shear flow in a co-flowing air stream with well-defined boundary conditions. The carrier flow is made intentionally simple and easy to model so that the focus can be placed on the important aspects of droplet dispersion and evaporation, as well as turbulence–droplet interactions. Phase Doppler interferometry is employed to record droplet quantities, while planar laser-induced fluorescence imaging is applied separately to obtain acetone vapour data. Measurements are conducted for four acetone spray jets in air at several axial stations starting from the nozzle exit. The combined liquid and vapour mass fluxes of acetone integrated across the jet at downstream locations agree satisfactorily with the total mass flow rate of acetone injected.     

EFFECT OF NOZZLE FAN ANGLE ON SPRAYS IN GAS-SOLID RISER FLOW

A three-dimensional simulation study is performed for investigating the hydrodynamic behaviors of a cross-flow liquid nitrogen spray injected into an air-fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) riser of rectangular cross-section. Rectangular nozzles with a fixed aspect ratio but different fan angles are used for the spray feeding. While our numerical simulation reveals a generic three-phase flow structure with strong three-phase interactions under rapid vaporization of sprays, this paper tends to focus on the study of the effect of nozzle fan angle on the spray coverage as well as vapor flux distribution by spray vaporization inside the riser flow. The gas-solid (air-FCC) flow is simulated using the multi-fluid method while the evaporating sprays (liquid nitrogen) are calculated using the Lagrangian trajectory method, with a strong two-way coupling between the Eulerian gas-solid flow and the Lagrangian trajectories of spray. Our simulation shows that the spray coverage is basically dominated by the spray fan angle. The spray fan angle has a very minor effect on spray penetration. The spray vaporization flux per unit area of spray coverage is highly non-linearly distributed along the spray penetration. The convection of gas-solid flow in a riser leads to a significant downward deviation of vapor generated by droplet vaporization, causing a strong recirculating wake region in the immediate downstream area of the spray.     

Development and characterization of a variable turbulence generation system

Experimental turbulent combustion studies require systems that can simulate the turbulence intensities [u′/U ₀ ~ 20–30% (Koutmos and McGuirk in Exp Fluids 7(5):344–354, 1989)] and operating conditions of real systems. Furthermore, it is important to have systems where turbulence intensity can be varied independently of mean flow velocity, as quantities such as turbulent flame speed and turbulent flame brush thickness exhibit complex and not yet fully understood dependencies upon both U ₀ and u′. Finally, high pressure operation in a highly pre-heated environment requires systems that can be sealed, withstand high gas temperatures, and have remotely variable turbulence intensity that does not require system shut down and disassembly. This paper describes the development and characterization of a variable turbulence generation system for turbulent combustion studies. The system is capable of a wide range of turbulence intensities (10–30%) and turbulent Reynolds numbers (140–2,200) over a range of flow velocities. An important aspect of this system is the ability to vary the turbulence intensity remotely, without changing the mean flow velocity. This system is similar to the turbulence generators described by Videto and Santavicca (Combust Sci Technol 76(1):159–164, 1991) and Coppola and Gomez (Exp Therm Fluid Sci 33(7):1037–1048, 2009), where variable blockage ratio slots are located upstream of a contoured nozzle. Vortical structures from the slots impinge on the walls of the contoured nozzle to produce fine-scale turbulence. The flow field was characterized for two nozzle diameters using three-component Laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) and hotwire anemometry for mean flow velocities from 4 to 50 m/s. This paper describes the key design features of the system, as well as the variation of mean and RMS velocity, integral length scales, and spectra with nozzle diameter, flow velocity, and turbulence generator blockage ratio.     

Modeling of Liquid Fuel Injection, Evaporation and Mixing in a Gas Turbine Burner Using Large Eddy Simulations

The interaction of turbulence, temperature fluctuation, liquid fuel transport, mixing and evaporation is studied by using Large Eddy Simulations (LES). To assess the accuracy of the different components of the methods we consider first isothermal, single phase flow in a straight duct. The results using different numerical methods incorporating dynamic Sub-Grid-Scale (SGS) models are compared with DNS and experimental data. The effects of the interactions among turbulence, temperature fluctuation, spray transport, evaporation and mixing of the gaseous fuel are studied by using different assumptions on the temperature field. It has been found that there are strong non-linear interactions among temperature-fluctuation, evaporation and turbulent mixing which require additional modeling if not full LES is used. The developed models and methods have been applied to a gas turbine burner into which liquid fuel is injected. The dispersion of the droplets in the burner is described. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A two-equation turbulence model for jet flows laden with vaporizing droplets

A two-equation turbulence model for steady incompressible two-phase flows including phase change has been recently developed by Mostafa & Elghobashi (1984). This model is tested for the flow of a turbulent axisymmetric gaseous jet laden with evaporating liquid droplets. To avoid the problem of density fluctuations of the carrier phase at this stage, only isothermal flow is considered and vaporization is assumed to be due to the vapor concentration gradient. The continuous size distribution of the droplets is approximated by finite size groups. Each group is considered as a continuous phase interpenetrating and interacting with the carrier phase. Two test cases have been predicted by the model. The first is for a Freon-11 spray issuing from a round nozzle, where experimental data are available at distances equal to or greater than 170 nozzle diameters. Good agreement between the data and the predictions was achieved. The second is for a methanol spray where no experiments are available yet and the predictions consider the flow region close to the nozzle ($\text{z/D < 40}$). The results of the methanol spray include distributions of the mean velocity, volume fractions of the different phases, concentration of the evaporated material in the carrier phase, turbulence intensity and shear stress of the carrier phase, droplet diameter distribution, and the jet spreading rate. In this case the results are analyzed based on a qualitative comparison with the corresponding single phase jet flow.     

Modeling droplet dispersion and interphase turbulent kinetic energy transfer using a new dual-timescale Langevin model

Dispersion of spray droplets and the modulation of turbulence in the ambient gas by the dispersing droplets are two coupled phenomena that are closely linked to the evolution of global spray characteristics, such as the spreading rate of the spray and the spray cone angle. Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulent gas flows laden with sub-Kolmogorov size particles, in the absence of gravity, report that dispersion statistics and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) evolve on different timescales. Furthermore, each timescale behaves differently with Stokes number, a non-dimensional flow parameter (defined in this context as the ratio of the particle response time to the Kolmogorov timescale of turbulence) that characterizes how quickly a particle responds to turbulent fluctuations in the carrier or gas phase. A new dual-timescale Langevin model (DLM) composed of two coupled Langevin equations for the fluctuating velocities, one for each phase, is proposed. This model possesses a unique feature that the implied TKE and velocity autocorrelation in each phase evolve on different timescales. Consequently, this model has the capability of simultaneously predicting the disparate Stokes number trends in the evolution of dispersion statistics, such as velocity autocorrelations, and TKE in each phase. Predictions of dispersion statistics and TKE from the new model show good agreement with published DNS of non-evaporating and evaporating droplet-laden turbulent flow.     

Large Eddy Simulation of a Polydisperse Ethanol Spray Flame

Ethanol is identified as an interesting alternative fuel. In this regards, the predictive capability of combustion Large Eddy Simulation approach coupled to Lagrangian droplet dynamic model to retrieve the turbulent droplet dispersion, droplet size distribution, spray evolution and combustion properties is investigated in this paper for an ethanol spray flame. Following the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach with a fully two way coupling, the Favre-filtered low Mach number Navier-Stokes equations are solved on structured grids with dynamic sub-grid scale models to describe the turbulent carrier gas phase. Droplets are injected in polydisperse manner and generated in time dependent boundary conditions. They evaporate to form an air-fuel mixture that yields spray flame. Part of the ethanol droplets evaporates within the prevaporization area before reaching the combustion zone, making the flame to burn in a partially premixed regime. The chemistry is described by a tabulated detailed chemistry based on the flamelet generated manifold approach. The fuel, ethanol, is modeled by a detailed reaction mechanism consisting of 56 species and 351 reversible reactions. The simulation results including excess gas temperature, droplet velocities and corresponding fluctuations, droplet mean diameters and spray volume flux at different distances from the exit plane show good agreement with experimental data. Analysis of combustion spray features allows gaining a deep insight into the two-phase flow process ongoing.     

Statistical Analysis of Turbulent Flame-Droplet Interaction: A Direct Numerical Simulation Study

Turbulent combustion of mono-disperse droplet-mist has been analysed based on three-dimensional Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) in canonical configuration under decaying turbulence for a range of different values of droplet equivalence ratio (?_d), droplet diameter (a_d) and root-mean-square value of turbulent velocity (u^′). The fuel is supplied in liquid phase and the evaporation of droplets gives rise to gaseous fuel for the flame propagation into the droplet-mist. It has been found that initial droplet diameter, turbulence intensity and droplet equivalence ratio can have significant influences on the volume-integrated burning rate, flame surface area and burning rate per unit area. The droplets are found to evaporate predominantly in the preheat zone, but some droplets penetrate the flame front, reaching the burned gas side where they evaporate and some of the resulting fuel vapour diffuses back towards the flame front. The combustion process in gaseous phase takes place predominantly in fuel-lean mode even for ?_d > 1. The probability of finding fuel-lean mixture increases with increasing initial droplet diameter because of slower evaporation of larger droplets and this predominantly fuel-lean mode of combustion exhibits the attributes of low Damköhler number combustion and gives rise to thickening of flame with increasing droplet diameter. The chemical reaction is found to take place under both premixed and non-premixed modes of combustion and the relative contribution of non-premixed combustion to overall heat release increases with increasing droplet size. The statistical behaviours of the flame propagation and mode of combustion have been analysed in detail and detailed physical explanations have been provided for the observed behaviour.     

Large Eddy Simulation of Reactive Two-Phase Flow in an Aeronautical Multipoint Burner

Because of compressibility criteria, fuel used in aeronautical combustors is liquid. Their numerical simulation therefore requires the modeling of two-phase flames, involving key phenomena such as injection, atomization, polydispersion, drag, evaporation and turbulent combustion. In the present work, particular modeling efforts have been made on spray injection and evaporation, and their coupling to turbulent combustion models in the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) approach. The model developed for fuel injection is validated against measurements in a non-evaporating spray in a quiescent atmosphere, while the evaporation model accuracy is discussed from results obtained in the case of evaporating isolated droplets. These models are finally used in reacting LES of a multipoint burner in take-off conditions, showing the complex two-phase flame structure.