Emission of carbon oxides during the combustion of lean methane-air premixed mixtures

A one-dimensional problem of propagation of a laminar flame front through a uniform methane-air mixture was solved using the GRI-Mech 3.0 reaction mechanism. An analysis of the composition of the combustion products behind the flame front at a pressure of 10 atm, an initial mixture temperature of 600 K, and two values of the air-to-fuel equivalence ratio (α = 1.8 and 2.5) was performed. It was demonstrated that, at short residence times, the carbon oxide emission increases as the mixture is made leaner, with the opposite tendency being observed at long residence times. Numerical calculations of the characteristics of turbulent flow and combustion in two axisymmetric homogeneous-combustion model chambers with relatively long residence times were performed within the framework of a bulk (quasi-laminar) combustion model. In calculations, the methane-air mixture composition and the wall temperature of one of the chambers were varied. The case of cooling air inflow through the chamber wall was considered. It was demonstrated that, over a wide range of parameters in the combustion chamber and on its wall, the CO emission monotonically decreases as the degree of mixture leaning grows, but it increases when the chamber wall is cooled and when cooling air is blown through the wall.