Dilution effects on laminar jet diffusion flame lengths

Many studies have examined the stoichiometric lengths of laminar gas jet diffusion flames. However, these have emphasized normal flames of undiluted fuel burning in air. Many questions remain about the effects of fuel dilution, oxygen-enhanced combustion, and inverse flames. Thus, the stoichiometric lengths of 287 normal and inverse gas jet flames are measured for a broad range of nitrogen dilution. The fuels are methane and propane and the ambient pressure is atmospheric. Nitrogen addition to the fuel and/or oxidizer is found to increase the stoichiometric lengths of both normal and inverse diffusion flames, but this effect is small at high reactant mole fraction. This counters previous assertions that inert addition to the fuel stream has a negligible effect on the lengths of normal diffusion flames. The analytical model of Roper is extended to these conditions by specifying the characteristic diffusivity to be the mean diffusivity of the fuel and oxidizer into stoichiometric products and a characteristic temperature that scales with the adiabatic flame temperature and the ambient temperature. The extended model correlates the measured lengths of normal and inverse flames with coefficients of determination of 0.87 for methane and 0.97 for propane.     

Decreasing liftoff height behavior in diluted laminar lifted methane jet flames

Stabilization of laminar lifted coflow jet flames of nitrogen-diluted methane was investigated experimentally and numerically. As the fuel jet velocity was increased, two distinct behaviors in liftoff height were observed depending on the initial fuel mole fraction; a monotonically increasing trend and a decreasing and then increasing trend (U-shaped behavior). The former was observed in the jet-developing region and the latter in the jet-developed region. Because the decreasing behavior of liftoff height with jet velocity has not been observed at ambient temperature, the present study focuses on decreasing liftoff height behavior. To elucidate the physical mechanism underlying the U-shaped behavior, numerical simulations of reacting jets were conducted by adopting a skeletal mechanism. The U-shaped behavior was related to the buoyancy. At small jet velocities, the relative importance of the buoyancy over convection was strong and the flow field was accelerated in the downstream region to stabilize the lifted flame. As the jet velocity increased, the relative importance of buoyancy decreased and the liftoff height decreased. As the jet velocity further increased, the flame stabilization was controlled by jet momentum and the liftoff height increased.     

Experimental investigation on burner lip thickness effect on the liftoff and blowout velocities of jet diffusion flame

This experimental study addresses issue on the effect of burner lip thickness on the liftoff and blowout velocities of jet diffusion flame discharging into quiescent air. Burner tubes of two kinds of inner diameter (2 and 3 mm) with a wide range of lip thicknesses (0.25–16.5 mm) are implemented with methane or propane jet diffusion flame, respectively. The results show that the burner lip thickness has a profound effect on flame liftoff velocities, especially the blowout velocities. With the increase of the lip thickness, the blowout velocities firstly increase, then decrease and lastly remain unchanged. Specifically, the blowout velocities of 2 and 3 mm inner diameters tubes reach the maximum values when the corresponding burner lip thicknesses are 2 and 1.5 mm, respectively. In addition, compared with free (unconfined) jet diffusion flame, the jet confinement results in slight reductions of flame liftoff and blowout velocities. The existence range of lifted flame issuing from larger diameter burner tube is wider than that of smaller diameter burner tube. The existence range of propane lifted flame is wider than that of methane.     

Laser spark ignition of a jet diffusion flame

In this work we report preliminary results on the laser ignition of a jet diffusion flame with jet flow rates ranging from 35 (Re=1086) to 103 cm³/s (Re=3197). The laser spark energy of about 4 mJ was used for all the tests. The relative amounts of fuel and air concentrations at the laser focus have been estimated using a variant of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. The ignition and the flame blow out times were measured using the time-resolved OH emission. Ignition times in the range from 3 to about 10 ms were observed depending on the experimental conditions and they increased towards the rich as well as the lean sides. The early time and late-time OH emissions indicate that chemical reactions during the initial stage of the blast wave expansion are not immediately responsible for the ignition. The ultimate fate of an ignition depends on the reactions at later times which determines whether the gas could undergo a transition from hot plasma to a propagating flame.     

Computation of NO x emission of a methane - air diffusion flame in a two-dimensional laminar jet with detailed chemistry

NOx formation from a methane - air diffusion flame in a two-dimensional jet involving highly preheated air, which has recently become an important topic in industrial furnaces, is investigated numerically using a full chemistry approach including C2, prompt and thermal mechanisms. Effects of increased air temperature on NOx formation are examined. Numerical results show that both NO formation mechanisms increase dramatically with increasing air temperature. A C-shaped production zone of NOx, corresponding to the fuel-lean and fuel-rich regions of triple flame, is identified. It is shown that NO formation with high air temperature can be suppressed efficiently by decreasing the oxygen concentration in the airstream. Production rate analyses of elementary reactions are made. Formation paths of NOx at low and high temperatures are obtained and compared. The results show that the NOx formation path depends strongly on the air temperature. In addition to the thermal route and the HCNNO route, the HCNCN and NOCN recycling routes are greatly enhanced at high air temperature. The results show that the prompt mechanism and the thermal mechanism are strongly coupled at high air temperature. Calculations of prompt NO and thermal NO in a two-dimensional jet and in the counterflow configuration reveal that the conventional method cannot give a correct prediction of prompt NO and thermal NO, particularly at high air temperature. A method using the concept of fixed nitrogen is presented. Numerical results indicate that the formation process of prompt NO and thermal NO can be evaluated properly by the present method.     

Influence of g-jitter on a laminar boundary layer type diffusion flame

A numerical study was conducted to analyze the effect of g-jitter on micro-gravity flames. A boundary layer laminar diffusion flame was used as a test case. This configuration is commonly used to study flame spread in microgravity, thus it is essential to understand the role of g-jitter in these flames. Furthermore, the role of buoyancy increases with the stream-wise coordinate permitting a systematic study of the impact of acceleration perturbations with a reduced number of experimental results. The evolution of experimental stand-off distances defined during parabolic flights compared well, in a qualitative manner, with numerical simulations, validating the aerodynamic aspects of the model. A systematic study using a sinusoidal function showed that perturbations characterized by high frequencies (>1 Hz) do not affect the flame stand-off distance. This is independent of the amplitude within the range of typical perturbations observed during parabolic flights. Perturbations occurring at lower frequencies significantly affected the flame geometry. Averaging over time through periods much longer than the perturbation cycle did not eventually reveal departure from purely zero-gravity flames. Fuel and oxidizer velocities have opposite effects on the sensitivity of the flames to gravity fluctuations. An increase in oxidizer velocity results in a sensitivity decrease. The influence of the multiple parameters of the problem can qualitatively be combined within a previously reported non-dimensional group. Nevertheless, it cannot account for the influence of frequency.     

Raman spectroscopic study of a laminar hydrogen diffusion flame in air

Spontaneous Raman spectroscopy has been employed for time-averaged, spatially-resolved measurements of temperature and species concentration in an axisymmetric, laminar hydrogen diffusion flame in quiescent air. Temperatures were obtained from vibrational Q-branch raman spectra of N₂, O₂, and H₂ and the rotational Raman spectra of N₂ and H₂, and concentrations of H₂, and N₂ were determined. The results are compared to existing numerical nonequilibrium calculations for the conditions of this experiment. Significant differences between experimental and predicted temperature and concentration profiles are observed. In particular, the flame is larger in both diameter and length and the flame zone is thicker than predicted. Some possible sources of the discrepancies are discussed.     

Transport mechanisms controlling soot production inside a non-buoyant laminar diffusion flame

This study integrates new and existing numerical modeling and experimental observations to provide a consistent explanation to observations pertaining flame length and soot volume fractions for laminar diffusion flames. Integration has been attempted by means of scaling analysis. Emphasis has been given to boundary layer flames. For the experiments, ethylene is injected through a flat porous burner into an oxidizer flowing parallel to the burner surface. The oxidizer is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, flowing at various velocities. All experiments were conducted in microgravity to minimize the role of buoyancy in distorting the aerodynamics of the flames. A previous numerical study emphasizing fuel transport was extended to include the oxidizer flow. Fictitious tracer particles were used to establish the conditions in which fuel and oxidizer interact. This allowed establishing regions of soot formation and oxidation as well as relevant characteristic length and time scales. Adequate scaling parameters then allow to establish explanations that are consistent for different burner configurations as well as “open-tip” and “closed-tip” flames.     

The effect of preferential diffusion on soot formation in a laminar ethylene/air diffusion flame

The influence of preferential diffusion on soot formation in a laminar ethylene/air diffusion flame was investigated by numerical simulation using three different transport property calculation methods. One simulation included preferential diffusion and the other two neglected preferential diffusion. The results show that the neglect of preferential diffusion or the use of unity Lewis number for all species results in a significant underprediction of soot volume fraction. The peak soot volume fraction is reduced from 8.0 to 2.0 ppm for the studied flame when preferential diffusion is neglected in the simulation. Detailed examination of numerical results reveals that the underprediction of soot volume fraction in the simulation neglecting preferential diffusion is due to the slower diffusion of some species from main reaction zone to PAH and soot formation layer. The slower diffusion of these species causes lower PAH formation rate and thus results in lower soot inception rate and smaller particle surface area. The smaller surface area further leads to smaller surface growth rate. In addition, the neglect of preferential diffusion also leads to higher OH concentration in the flame, which causes the higher specific soot oxidation rate. The lower inception rate, smaller surface growth rate and higher specific oxidation rate results in the lower soot volume fraction when preferential diffusion is neglected. The finding of the paper implies the importance of preferential diffusion for the modeling of not only laminar but maybe also some turbulent flames.     

A numerical study on the formation of diffusion flame islands in a turbulent hydrogen jet lifted flame

This paper presents a numerical study on the formation of diffusion flame islands in a hydrogen jet lifted flame. A real size hydrogen jet lifted flame is numerically simulated by the DNS approach over a period of about 0.5 ms. The diameter of hydrogen injector is 2 mm, and the injection velocity is 680 m/s. The lifted flame is composed of a stable leading edge flame, a vigorously turbulent inner rich premixed flame, and a number of outer diffusion flame islands. The relatively long-term observation makes it possible to understand in detail the time-dependent flame behavior in rather large time scales, which are as large as the time scale of the leading edge flame unsteadiness. From the observation, the following three findings are obtained concerning the formation of diffusion flame islands. (1) A thin oxygen diffusion layer is developed along the outer boundary of the lifted flame, where the diffusion flame islands burn in a rather flat shape. (2) When a diffusion flame island comes into contact with the fluctuating inner rich premixed flame, combustion is intensified due to an increase in the hydrogen supply by molecular diffusion. This process also works for the production of the diffusion flame islands in the oxygen diffusion layer. (3) When a large unburned gas volume penetrates into the leading edge flame, the structure of the leading edge flame changes. In this transformation process, a diffusion flame island comes near the leading edge flame. The local deficiency of oxygen plays an important role in this production process.     

PDF mixing time scales for premixed combustion in the laminar flame limit

A new mixing time scale for PDF calculations of premixed combustion in the laminar flame limit is introduced. It is based on the characteristics of the “random walk” diffusion process and accurately captures scalar micro-mixing such that physical features of the premixed flames are preserved. The speed of a freely-propagating laminar flame can be captured accurately. Extreme stochastic events may, however, lead to flame acceleration, but flame stability can be recovered with the introduction of a conditioning variable that relaxes towards an Eulerian reference field. With conditioning the predicted flame speed is quite insensitive towards the exact value of the only modelling parameter. This modelling parameter then allows to control the minor scalar fluctuations and deviations from a flamelet structure which is thought to be one of the key features of conditioning methods.     

Multi-diagnostic soot measurements in a laminar diffusion flame to assess the ISF database consistency

Control of soot emission raises fundamental issues and has important practical implications requiring a full understanding of soot production and oxidation processes. The research reported in the present paper intends to contribute to the studies carried out within the frame of the International Sooting Flame workshop (ISF) on laminar sooting flames. The objective is to identify and quantify sources of experimental errors and to extend the existing database for the Yale laminar diffusion burner flame. This will especially enable more comprehensive comparisons among different experimental techniques and numerical simulations. To this end, a combined use of Modulated Absorption/Emission (MAE) and Laser Induced Incandescence (LII) techniques is presented in this work. Results are compared with already existing experimental data in terms of soot volume fraction, soot temperature and primary particle size distribution, highlighting the high variability of the experimental data depending on the measurement techniques as well as the underlying assumptions and post-processing methods. These complementary original data may serve to guide the validation of numerical modeling in this configuration.     

甲烷/氧气层流反扩散火焰形态及滞后特性研究

对空气气氛中甲烷/氧气反扩散火焰的形态和推举滞后特性进行了实验研究. 实验中通过改变气体流量考察了气速变化对火焰形态演变及滞后特性的影响, 并利用紫外相机系统研究了气速对不同形态火焰中OH^*分布的影响. 研究结果表明: 甲烷气速、氧气气速和火焰的历史状态是决定火焰形态的三个重要参数, 并以此对实验范围内的火焰形态进行了分区; 氧气气速对不同形态反扩散火焰轴线上的OH^*分布有相似的影响, 当氧气缺乏时, 反扩散反应区较短, 当氧气富余时, 反扩散反应区在轴向分布较广; 同轴甲烷的气速对反扩散火焰的滞后特性影响显著, 随着甲烷气速的增加, 反扩散火焰的推举速度和再附着速度呈线性减小, 部分预混火焰向反扩散火焰转变的速度呈线性增加.     

The concept of 2D gated imaging for particle sizing in a laminar diffusion flame

In this work, time-resolved laser-induced incandescence (TiRe LII) has been employed to measure primary particle diameters of soot in an atmospheric laminar ethylene diffusion flame. The generated data set complements existing data determined in one single location and takes advantage of the good spatial resolution of the ICCD detection. Time resolution is achieved by shifting the camera gate along the LII decay. One key input parameter for the analysis of time-resolved LII is the local flame temperature. This was determined on a grid throughout the flame by coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering. The accurate temperature data, in combination with other published data from this flame, are well suited for soot model validation purposes while we showed feasibility of a shifted gate approach to deduce 2D particle sizes in the chosen standard flame.     

On laminar premixed flame propagating into autoigniting mixtures under engine-relevant conditions

Usually premixed flame propagation and laminar burning velocity are studied for mixtures at normal or elevated temperatures and pressures, under which the ignition delay time of the premixture is much larger than the flame resistance time. However, in spark-ignition engines and spark-assisted compression ignition engines, the end-gas in the front of premixed flame is at the state that autoignition might happen before the mixture is consumed by the premixed flame. In this study, laminar premixed flames propagating into an autoigniting dimethyl ether/air mixture are simulated considering detailed chemistry and transport. The emphasis is on the laminar burning velocity of autoigniting mixtures under engine-relevant conditions. Two types of premixed flames are considered: one is the premixed planar flame propagating into an autoigniting DME/air without confinement; and the other is premixed spherical flame propagating inside a closed chamber, for which four stages are identified. Due to the confinement, the unburned mixture is compressed to high temperature and pressure close to or under engine-relevant conditions. The laminar burning velocity is determined from the constant-volume propagating spherical flame method as well as PREMIX. The laminar burning velocities of autoigniting DME/air mixture at different temperatures, pressures, and autoignition progresses are obtained. It is shown that the first-stage and second-stage autoignition can significantly accelerate the flame propagation and thereby greatly increase the laminar burning velocity. When the first-stage autoignition occurs in the unburned mixture, the isentropic compression assumption does not hold and thereby the traditional method cannot be used to calculate the laminar burning velocity. A modified method without using the isentropic compression assumption is proposed. It is shown to work well for autoigniting mixtures. Besides, a power law correlation is obtained based on all the laminar burning velocity data. It works well for mixtures before autoignition while improvement is still needed for mixtures after autoignition.     

Critical behaviour of a one-dimensional crystal at the displacive limit

The partition function of a one-dimensional, one-component model is calculated exactly by means of a transfer-operator method, and the critical behaviour at the displacive limit is evaluated analytically. We prove a generalized scaling hypothesis and discuss the scaling behaviour in the critical region. We find critical exponents for the specific heat,=2/3 for the susceptibility, and a crossover exponent = 2/3. The results satisfy the scaling relations which do not involve the dimensionality but violate those which contain the dimensionality. Scaling functions for the susceptibility and the order parameter are calculated.Supported by Schweizerischer Nationalfonds.     

Fluctuating characteristics of radiative source term in hydrogen turbulent jet diffusion flame

The laminar flamelet model in combination with joint probability density function transport equation of mixture fraction and turbulence frequency is used to simulate turbulent jet diffusion flames of hydrogen. The frequency distributions of radiative source terms are calculated for four important infrared bands of water vapor. The results show that, for the given ensemble, about 95% samples of radiative source term for each band locate within the region of ±3.0 standard deviation of the mean radiative source term. Due to the different relation between band intensity parameters and temperature for every band, the symmetrization of frequency distributions for each band is different.     

Attachment structure of a non-premixed laminar methane flame

The stoichiometry and the flame structure of the leading edge, an anchor point, of a non-premixed methane flame were investigated. Local equivalence ratio at an anchor point was measured using local chemiluminescence spectra with a high spatial resolution of 17 × 450 μm. Spatially and spectrally resolved chemiluminescence measurements were carried out along the centerline and radius of the non-premixed laminar flame. The chemiluminescence spectra measured at the flame tip contained very strong luminous spectra, while these continuous background spectra disappeared at the blue flame tip region. The chemiluminescence spectra below the blue flame region were very similar to those measured in laminar premixed methane/air flames. Based on these results, the local equivalence ratio near the anchor point was calculated. Therefore, we measure the anchor point location, its shape, and stoichiometry using the flame spectra. At the anchor point, there was an island of lower equivalence ratio of 0.65, which can be estimated as the lower flammable limit of premixed laminar flame. The size of the anchor point was of horizontal elliptical shape less than 0.6 and 0.4 mm in vertical length, which located at 1.2 mm above the burner rim and inside of the rim.