Atmospheric pressure premixed hydrocarbon-air flames: Theory and experiment

Abstract

Local measurements of temperature and species concentrations in flames are necessary for the successful development of accurate models of flame propagation and structure. To date, one of the few hydrocarbon fuel flames that has been modeled to include the kinetics of many chemical reactions is the premixed,methaneair flame. These theoretical models include both species difusion and thermal conduction, and they are restricted to laminar propagation only. Most previous comparisons of these theoretical models to experimental data were for low-pressure (i.e., approximately 5 kPa) flame data only. Here, however, temperature and composition profiles of fuel, O 2, CO, H 2, CO 2, H 2O, and OH are reported for both atmospheric pressure, premixed, laminar, methane-air, and propane-air flames. The comparison between one of the existing theoretical models and these experiments shows good agreement for fule, O 2, H 2O, CO, CO 2, and OH. Systematic deviations from the theoretical predictions are observed for the H 2 concentration profiles.