A comprehensive study of flamelet tabulation methods for pulverized coal combustion in a turbulent mixing layer—Part II: Strong heat losses and multi-mode combustion

Abstract

This paper is a continuation of our work done in Part I, in which the a priori and budget analyses were conducted, Wen et al. (2019). In this work, we focus on addressing specific and recurring issues in flamelet modeling for pulverized coal combustion, including strong heat losses, multi-mode combustion and reaction progress variable definition. First, extended flamelet formulations are developed that can take into account strong heat loss effects in pulverized coal combustion systems. Then, to characterize multi-mode combustion in pulverized coal flames, a coupled premixed and non-premixed flamelet model is developed using the combustion mode index. Finally, the effects of reaction progress variable definition on the flamelet predictions are quantified. A state-of-the-art direct numerical simulation database is employed to challenge the newly developed flamelet models. The tabulated thermo-chemical quantities are compared with the reference direct numerical simulation results through a priori analyses. Comparisons show that the newly developed flamelet models which take into account strong heat loss effects can predict the gas temperature and species mass fractions correctly. The adiabatic flamelet models over-predict the corresponding thermo-chemical quantities in regions where the interphase heat transfer is significant. Coupled with a linear extrapolation method, the prediction of the gas temperature with the adiabatic flamelet models can be improved. The performance of the multi-mode flamelet model depends on whether the local combustion mode can be correctly identified. The conventional combustion mode index based on the gradients of fuel and oxidizer species mass fractions cannot correctly identify the combustion mode in the entire combustion field.