An experimental study of the characteristics of blended hydrogen-methane non-premixed jet flames

Abstract

The addition of hydrogen to natural gas promotes the reactivity of fuel and thus increases the jet fire risk from pipeline leakage during the transport process of blended hydrogen-natural gas. Aiming to evaluating the potential jet fire risk, this paper experimentally studied the characteristics of H2/CH4 jet flames at varied heat release rates (HRRs) with H2 volume fraction (fv) ranging from 0% to 90% by two circular nozzles (diameters: 3 and 5 mm). The results show that with the increase of H2 volume fraction, two competing effects on flame height were observed, that is, the increase in mixture molecular diffusivity, radicals pool, and air entrainment decreases the flame height, while the increase in flame temperature and jet velocity of fuel flow with a small flow Reynold number increases the flame height. Comparisons of different previous correlations of flame height with current experiments were conducted to obtain the applicable flame height model for H2/CH4 flames. The ratio of flame width to flame height for two nozzle diameters increases with dimensionless HRR when HRR is small, and then becomes nearly constant (∼ 0.145). The flame width normalized by nozzle diameter has a power dependence on dimensionless HRR, i.e., 0.48 and 0.59 power for the 3 and 5 mm nozzle, respectively. Further theoretical analysis suggested the dimensionless correlations of lift-off height of H2/CH4 flames with fv ≤ 50%.