Behavior of Moderately Oscillating Sooting Methane-Air Diffusion Flames

The properties of oscillating sooting methane air diffusion flames have been investigated by different methods in order to examine instationary effects in these flames. The pulsation has been induced by modulation of the methane gas flow with an amplitude of 30% of the mean gas flow. The focus of the investigations is on the flame oscillated at 10 Hz, which is close to the frequency of self-induced flickering. Additionally, further measurements at varying frequencies have been performed to determine the transition towards steady-state behavior. Different measurement techniques allowed the determination of soot volume fractions, particle number densities, mean particle radii, particle temperatures, and OH*-chemiluminescence. The oscillating flame shows strong instationary effects and increased soot concentrations compared to the steady-state flame of equivalent mean fuel flow. Accompanying calculations are based on a kinematic analysis of diffusion flames. The model can sufficiently well reproduce the flame height and the contour of the flame. Furthermore, the model describes the asymmetric course of the OH*-emission signal. A simple numerical approach is deduced that explains qualitatively the strong variations of the soot volume fraction in an oscillating flame. This paper is based on work presented at the 2nd ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Computational Combustion, Delft, 2007.     

The Effect of Preferential Diffusion on the Soot Initiation Process in Ethylene Diffusion Flames

The influence of differential diffusion of chemical species in the soot initiation process in turbulent flows is investigated through Direct Numerical Simulations coupled to a compact global chemical mechanisms for ethylene (C₂H₄) flame combustion (Løvås et al., Combust Sci Tech 182(11):1945?C1960, 2010) featuring the important reaction steps for acetylene production. Our focus is on the formation of acetylene (C₂H₂) which is one of the most important species indicative of soot formation layers, especially in relation to the location of the H and H₂ layers. The effect of preferential diffusion is assessed by comparison of results from unity and non-unity Lewis number simulations. The results indicate that under moderate turbulent conditions, where preferential diffusion effects become prominent, and with the global scheme used preferential diffusion greatly enhances the spread of the radical H whose peak value in mass fraction is reduced by a factor of about two; the spread of H₂ is also enhanced though to a lesser extent. Importantly, the H and H₂ spread into a range of mixture fraction Z between 0.2 and 0.3 which contains the soot formation range, supporting the hypothesis that soot formation is enhanced by preferential diffusion. Nevertheless, the acetylene formation layers themselves show little adjustment in the presence of non-unity Lewis numbers suggesting that the acetylene formation is dominated under the current conditions by the direct thermal decomposition of ethylene to acetylene in the global chemistry used. The specific F _i factors that appear in flamelet models are explicitly computed; only F _H, F _H2 and F _CO show appreciable differences on the fuel lean range of mixture fraction due to non-unity Lewis numbers, suggesting that the effects of non-unity Lewis numbers could be incorporated by a selective inclusion of only a few of the F _i factors in order to save computational time.     

Computation of Conditional Average Scalar Dissipation in Turbulent Jet Diffusion Flames

The modelling of conditional scalar dissipation in locally self-similar turbulent reacting jets is considered. The streamwise dependence in the transport equation of the conserved scalar pdf is represented by a function solely dependent on centreline mixture fraction. This procedure provides a simple model suitable for non-homogeneous flows and ensures positive values for conditional scalar dissipation. It has been tested in pure hydrogen-air jet diffusion flames using a Conditional Moment Closure method with detailed 12species, 23 reactions chemistry. The calculations show good agreement of the averaged scalar dissipation with reference values and the model proves to be superior to previous models based on homogeneous flows if the distribution of the conditional scalar dissipation in mixture fraction space is compared with experimental results. A dependence of NO predictions on the model of conditional scalar dissipation can be observed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Role of Buoyancy on Instabilities and Structure of Transitional Gas Jet Diffusion Flames

Transitional jet diffusion flames provide the link between dynamics of laminar and turbulent flames. In this study, instabilities and their interaction with the flow structure are explored in a transitional jet diffusion flame, with focus on isolating buoyancy effects. Experiments are conducted in hydrogen flames with fuel jet Reynolds number of up to 2,200 and average jet velocity of up to 54 m/s. Since the fuel jet is laminar at the injector exit, the transition from laminar to turbulent flame occurs by the hydrodynamic instabilities in the shear layer of fuel jet. The instabilities and the flow structures are visualized and quantified by the rainbow schlieren deflectometry technique coupled with a high-speed imaging system. The schlieren images acquired at 2,000 frames per second allowed exposure time of 23 μs with spatial resolution of 0.4 mm. Results identify a hitherto unknown secondary instability in the flame surface, provide explanation for the observed intermittency in the breakpoint length, show coherent vortical structures downstream of the flame breakpoint, and illustrate gradual breakdown of coherent structures into small-scale random structures in the far field turbulent region.     

Influence of Differential Diffusion on Super-Equilibrium Temperature in Turbulent Non-Premixed Hydrogen/Air Flames

In this paper we wish to investigate the occurrence of super-equilibrium temperature values, observed in many experimental configurations. We would like to understand the origin of this phenomenon. Previous authors have already shown that differential diffusion can lead to considerable changes in the temperature field and we would like to build on top of this observation. We investigate numerically super-equilibrium combustion by considering both laminar counter-flow and turbulent diluted hydrogen/air diffusion flames. These turbulent flames are computed using direct numerical simulations (DNS). A detailed reaction mechanism is employed and the transport properties are modeled using multicomponent diffusion velocities, including the Soret effect. Analyzing these results we introduce three complementary parameters (dilution-free mixture fraction, dilution excess and local enthalpy) to describe the local combustion conditions. Introducing a measure of dilution separately from the mixture fraction is necessary for a proper analysis. Using this set of parameters it becomes possible to explain super-equilibrium temperature levels as a consequence of differential diffusion.     

Turbulence Filter and POD Analysis for Velocity Fields in Lifted CH4-Air Diffusion Flames

The turbulence filter and the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD)methods are applied to PIV measurements of lifted CH₄-air diffusionflames at three different Reynolds numbers. Properties such as vorticityand strain rate distributions of the decomposed fields are analyzed inorder to assess the physical behavior. The turbulence filter can userelatively less data than the POD method while still providingsignificant insight about the flow field. The energy activation ratesshow the first modes (mean flow) account for 85% of the total energy.Reconstruction of the POD modes reveals that the combination of modesyields a complex fluctuating behavior. The averaged Reynolds stress ofthe mean flow removed parts shows interesting correlation with the meanflow vorticity and strain rate distributions. Selected turbulentproperties are calculated and discussed.     

Inverse Estimation of the Effective Diffusion of the Filter in the In Situ Diffusion and Retention (DR) Experiment

Porous filters are often used in laboratory and in situ diffusion and retention experiments. The proper interpretation of these experiments requires knowing the effective diffusion, D _e, of the filter which is commonly determined from laboratory diffusion experiments or estimated from the filter porosity. The D _e of the filter in the in situ experiment may differ from the D _e of the filter measured in the laboratory due to pore clogging. Here, we present an inverse method to estimate the D _e of the filter of in situ diffusion experiments. The method has been tested for several sampling schemes, numbers of synthetic data, N, and standard deviations of the noise, ??. It has been applied to the following tracers used in the in situ diffusion and retention (DR) experiment performed in the Opalinus clay at Mont Terri underground research laboratory: HTO/HDO, Br^?,I^?, ²² Na⁺,¹³³ Ba²⁺,⁸⁵ Sr²⁺, Cs⁺/¹³⁷Cs⁺, and ⁶⁰Co²⁺. The estimation error increases with the standard deviation of the noise of the data and decreases with the number of data. It is smallest for sorbing tracers. The D _e of the filter can be properly estimated from 12 data collected within the first 3?days for conservative tracers as long as ????? 0.02 and for sorbing tracers as long as ??????0.05. The estimate of D _e for conservative tracers is poor when data are collected from a 10-day experiment with daily sampling. The convergence of the estimation algorithm for conservative tracers improves by starting with a value of the D _e smaller than the true value. The choice of the initial value of D _e does not affect the convergence of the estimation algorithm for sorbing tracers. Filter clogging and vertical flow though the filter can influence the tracer transport through the filter. The use of the D _e of the filter obtained from a laboratory test for the in situ experiment may result in large errors for strongly sorbing tracers. Such errors can be overcome by estimating the equivalent D _e of the filter with the proposed inverse method which will be useful for the design of in situ diffusion experiments.     

Diffusion of Gold Nanoparticles in Inverse Opals Probed by Heterodyne Dynamic Light Scattering

The diffusive behavior of nanoparticles inside porous materials is attracting a lot of interest in the context of understanding, modeling, and optimization of many technical processes. A very powerful technique for characterizing the diffusive behavior of particles in free media is dynamic light scattering (DLS). The applicability of the method in porous media is considered, however, to be rather difficult due to the presence of multiple sources of scattering. In contrast to most of the previous approaches, the DLS method was applied without ensuring matching refractive indices of solvent and porous matrix in the present study. To test the capabilities of the method, the diffusion of spherical gold nanoparticles within the interconnected, periodic nanopores of inverse opals was analyzed. Despite the complexity of this system, which involves many interfaces and different refractive indices, a clear signal related to the motion of particles inside the porous media was obtained. As expected, the diffusive process inside the porous sample slowed down compared to the particle diffusion in free media. The obtained effective diffusion coefficients were found to be wave vector-dependent. They increased linearly with increasing spatial extension of the probed particle concentration fluctuations. On average, the slowing-down factor measured in this work agrees within combined uncertainties with literature data.

     

Uniform Hölder Estimates in a Class of Elliptic Systems and Applications to Singular Limits in Models for Diffusion Flames

The main result of this paper is a general Hölder estimate in a class of singularly perturbed elliptic systems. This estimate is applied to the study of the well-known Burke–Schuman approximation in flame theory. After reviewing some classical cases (equidiffusional case; high activation energy approximation) we turn to the non-equidiffusional case, and to nonlinear diffusion models. The limiting problems are nonlinear elliptic equations; they have Hölder or Lipschitz maximal global regularity. A natural question is then whether this regularity is kept uniformly throughout the approximation process, and we show that this is true in general.     

Flame Stabilization Mechanisms in Lifted Flames

Flame stabilization and the mechanisms that govern the dynamics at the flame base of lifted flames have been subject to numerous studies in recent years. A combined Large Eddy Simulation-Conditional Moment Closure (LES-CMC) approach has been successful in predicting flame ignition and stabilization by auto-ignition, but accurate modelling of the competition between turbulent quenching and laminar and turbulent flame propagation at the anchor point had not been demonstrated. This paper will consolidate LES-CMC results by analysing a wide range of lifted flame geometries with different prevailing stabilization mechanisms. The simulations allow a clear distinction of these mechanisms. It is corroborated that LES-CMC accurately predicts the competition between turbulence and chemistry during the auto-ignition process, the dynamics of turbulent flame propagation can be captured, however, the dynamics of the extinction process are not approximated well under certain conditions. The averaging process inherent in the CMC methods does not allow for an instant response of the transported conditionally averaged reactive species to the changes in the flow conditions and any response of the scalars will therefore be delayed. The dimensionality of the CMC implementation affects the solution and higher dimensionality does no necessarily improve results. Stationary or quasi-stationary conditions, however, can be well predicted for all flame configurations.     

Joint PDF Closure of Turbulent Premixed Flames

In this paper, a novel model for turbulent premixed combustion in the corrugated flamelet regime is presented, which is based on transporting a joint probability density function (PDF) of velocity, turbulence frequency and a scalar vector. Due to the high dimensionality of the corresponding sample space, the PDF equation is solved with a Monte-Carlo method, where individual fluid elements are represented by computational particles. Unlike in most other PDF methods, the source term not only describes reaction rates, but accounts for “ignition” of reactive unburnt fluid elements due to propagating embedded quasi laminar flames within a turbulent flame brush. Unperturbed embedded flame structures and a constant laminar flame speed (as expected in the corrugated flamelet regime) are assumed. The probability for an individual particle to “ignite” during a time step is calculated based on an estimate of the mean flame surface density (FSD), latter gets transported by the PDF method. Whereas this model concept has recently been published [21], here, a new model to account for local production and dissipation of the FSD is proposed. The following particle properties are introduced: a flag indicating whether a particle represents the unburnt mixture; a flame residence time, which allows to resolve the embedded quasi laminar flame structure; and a flag indicating whether the flame residence time lies within a specified range. Latter is used to transport the FSD, but to account for flame stretching, curvature effects, collapse and cusp formation, a mixing model for the residence time is employed. The same mixing model also accounts for molecular mixing of the products with a co-flow. To validate the proposed PDF model, simulation results of three piloted methane-air Bunsen flames are compared with experimental data and very good agreement is observed.     

Turbulence-Driven Blowout Instabilities of Premixed Bluff-Body Flames

Bluff-body flame instabilities are experimentally investigated under varying turbulence conditions during lean blowout. For all turbulence conditions, the blowout process is induced through a temporal reduction of the fuel flow rate to capture the flame-flow dynamics approaching blowout. Simultaneous high-speed particle image velocimetry (PIV), stereoscopic PIV, and C₂*/CH* chemiluminescence imaging are employed, along with an independent CH* imaging system, to capture flame-flow instabilities. Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) techniques are used to identify prominent flame oscillations and evaluate recurring spatiotemporal modes during blowout. The results reveal that the dominant flame oscillations and wrinkling characteristics are directly dependent on the turbulence conditions in the combustor. Specifically, the flame-flow oscillations are strongly coupled with the integral length scales, which were able to collapse the oscillation frequencies to a unified value. The turbulence-driven flame-flow oscillations are shown to largely impact the magnitude, temporal evolution, and oscillatory behavior of the flame strain rate. As the turbulence intensity is increased, the oscillation of the flame strain rate increases in frequency, making it more likely for localized extinctions to occur. Additionally, the magnitude of the flame strain rate increases at high turbulence intensities and accelerates the lean blowout process.

     

Noise Reduction in Non-Premixed Lifted-Jet Flames

The characteristic changes in non-premixed lifted flames when excited by hole tones from a cavity, placed in the flow path of the fuel gas, were studied. A significant reduction of the sound pressure level was observed in the low-frequency noise at the flame base of the lifted flame when the hole tones were induced in the jet. The liftoff height and the mean diameter of the flame base decreased for a given jet Reynolds number. The blow-off velocities also increased suggesting improved flame stability in the presence of the hole tones induced by the cavity. Incorporation of the cavity upstream of a burner nozzle is demonstrated to give a quieter lifted flame with improved stability characteristics. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Flow Structure of Lifted Swirling Jet Flames

Swirling combustion is widely applied in various applications such as gas turbines, utility boilersor waste incinerators. This article contributes to the ongoing research by providing experimentaldata that are gathered in the mixing zone of a lifted swirling premixed natural gas flame. Theobjective of this paper is fivefold: (1) to introduce the lifted swirling flame featuring lowNO _x emissions (2) to provide experimental data such as major species distributions, temperature and streamlines of the flow pattern, (3) to report on velocity bias in probability density function (PDF) distributions and to present PDF sequences of velocities in medium scale swirling flows, (4) to make an assessment on the local small-scale turbulence that is present in the swirling mixinglayer and (5) to provide new experimental data for model verification and development.The PDFs are corrected in order to compensate for the velocity bias phenomenon, which is typicalfor randomly sampled LDA data. Sequences of axial PDF data are presented and measurement locationsof interest are selected to look at the PDF characteristics of the internal and externalrecirculation zones, the mixing layer and the onset of the reacting flow into detail. The mixinglayer PDFs covered a wide velocity range and revealed bimodality; even the concept ofmulti-modality is suggested and explored. Analysis showed that a sum of two Gaussian distributionscan accurately envelop the experimental PDFs. The reason for this broadband turbulence behavior isto be found in combination of precessing and flapping motion of the flow structures, and also incombustion generated instabilities of the lifted flame. As a result, the flame brush is wide (largescale motion) and the mixing (small-scale turbulence) flattens any high temperatures in thecombustion process.The multi-scale turbulence concept is subsequently used to make anassessment of the local turbulence characteristics in the mixing layer.The idea is that the PDFs capture both contributions of the flow-inherent fine grain turbulence (u _l ) which is superposed on slowlarge scale fluctuating structures. It is this u _l that will be of interest in continued research on the classification of the lifted flame into acombustion regime diagram (e.g. Borghi diagram). Finally, the bimodalitycharacter in reacting flows and the prediction of large-scale structuresmay be a challenge for LES researchers.     

Flow Structure of Swirling Turbulent Propane Flames

Flow structure of premixed propane–air swirling jet flames at various combustion regimes was studied experimentally by stereo PIV, CH* chemiluminescence imaging, and pressure probe. For the non-swirling conditions, a nonlinear feedback mechanism of the flame front interaction with ring-like vortices, developing in the jet shear layer, was found to play important role in the stabilisation of the premixed lifted flame. For the studied swirl rates (S = 0.41, 0.7, and 1.0) the determined domain of stable combustion can be divided into three main groups of flame types: attached flames, quasi-tubular flames, and lifted flames. These regimes were studied in details for the case of S = 1.0, and the difference in the flow structure of the vortex breakdown is described. For the quasi-tubular flames an increase of flow precessing above the recirculation zone was observed when increased the stoichiometric coefficient from 0.7 to 1.4. This precessing motion was supposed to be responsible for the observed increase of acoustic noise generation and could drive the transition from the quasi-tubular to the lifted flame regime.     

Presumed Joint-PDF Modelling for Turbulent Stratified Flames

Flow, Turbulence and Combustion - Turbulence–chemistry interaction models such as the conditional moment closure and various flamelet models require a presumed Probability Density Function...     

Extended Proper Orthogonal Decomposition for Analysis of Unsteady Flames

The aim of this work is to present the use of proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and extended proper orthogonal decomposition (EPOD) for revealing flame dynamics as a set of statistical quantities referred as modes. The flame fluctuations are used to derive an empirical functions base representing the most important features of the flame. The capabilities of the technique are exemplified in the case of an unsteady laminar flame. The flame is naturally unsteady and can be excited to amplify the fluctuations. The data base consists of synchronous Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and OH-Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence (OH-PLIF) measurements. It was found that the POD based upon the PIV vectors only reveals flow features when the excitation is added. On contrary, the OH-PLIF based POD performs well in any case and constitutes a suitable base for the EPOD analysis.     

Topology and Brush Thickness of Turbulent Premixed V-shaped Flames

Topology and brush thickness of turbulent premixed V-shaped flames were investigated using Mie scattering and Particle Image Velocimetry techniques. Mean bulk flow velocities of 4.0, 6.2, and 8.3 m/s along with two fuel-air equivalence ratios of 0.6 and 0.7 were tested in the experiments. Using a novel experimental turbulence generating apparatus, three turbulence intensities of approximately 2 %, 6 %, and 17 % were tested in the experiments. The results show that topology of the flame front is significantly altered by changing the turbulence intensity. Specifically, at relatively small turbulence intensities, the flame fronts feature wrinkles which are symmetric with respect to the vertical axis. At moderate values of turbulence intensities, the flame fronts form cusps. The formation of cusps is more pronounced at large mean bulk flow velocities. The results associated with relatively large turbulence intensity show that flame surfaces feature: mushroom-shaped structures, freely propagating sub-flames, pocket formation, localized extinction, and horn-shaped structures. Analysis of the results show that the flame brush thickness follows a linear correlation with the root-mean-square of the flame front position. The correlation is in agreement with the results of past experimental investigations associated with moderately turbulent premixed V-shaped flames, and holds for the range of turbulence conditions tested. This suggests that the underlying mechanism associated with the dynamics of moderately turbulent premixed V-shaped flames proposed in past studies can potentially be valid for the the wide range of turbulence conditions examined in the present investigation.     

Modelling of Spray Flames with Doubly Conditional Moment Closure

Simulations of a pilot-stabilised flame in a uniformly dispersed ethanol spray are performed using a Doubly Conditional Moment Closure (DCMC) model. The DCMC equation for spray combustion is derived, using the mixture fraction and the reaction progress variable as conditioning variables, including droplet evaporation and differential diffusion terms. A set of closure sub-models is suggested to allow for a first, preliminary application of the DCMC model to the test case presented here. In particular, the DCMC model is used to provide complete closure for the Favre-averaged spray terms in the mean and variance equations of the conditioning variables and the present test case is used to assess the importance of each term. Comparison with experimental data shows a promising overall agreement, whilst differences are related to modelling choices.     

Transient Behavior of Turbulent Scalar Transport in Premixed Flames

Transition from gradient to countergradient scalar transport in a statistically planar, one-dimensional, developing, premixed turbulent flame is studied both theoretically and numerically. A simple criterion of the transition referred to is derived from the balance equation for the combustion progress variable, with the criterion highlighting an important role played by flame development. A balance equation for the difference in velocities $\bar{u}_b$ and $\bar{u}_u$ conditioned on burned and unburned mixture, respectively, is numerically integrated. Both analytical and computed results show that; (1) The flux $\overline{\rho u'' c''}$ is gradient during an early stage of flame development followed by transition to countergradient scalar transport at certain instant t _tr . (2) The transition time is increased when turbulence length scale L is increased or when the laminar flame speed S _L and/or the density ratio are decreased. (3) The transition time normalized using the turbulence time scale is increased by u??. Moreover, the numerical simulations have shown that the transition time is increased by u?? if a ratio of u??/S _L is not large. This dependence of t _tr on u?? is substantially affected by (i) the mean pressure gradient induced within the flame due to heat release and (ii) by the damping effect of combustion on the growth rate of mean flame brush thickness. The reasonable qualitative agreement between the computed trends and available experimental and DNS data, as well as the agreement between the computed trends and the present theoretical results, lends further support to the conditioned balance equation used in the present work.