CFD Simulation on Combustion and Study of the Effect of Water Content in the Emission of Pollutants

Abstract

Combustion or burning is high temperature exothermic chemical reaction between a fuel and an oxidant accompanied by the production of heat, light and unburnt gases or flames. The emission of harmful gases out of the combustor comprising of CO2, CO, NOx has an adverse effect on the ambient. Combustion is an integral part of various engineering applications like IC Engines, aircraft engines, rocket engines and furnaces. Combustion manifests itself as a wide domain during the design, analysis and performance characteristics stages of the above-mentioned applications both experimentally and numerically. In the combustion of methane and air the main products are CO2 and water. However, the formation of these products involves very complex chemical reactions and hundreds of different species are inter mediated in the whole process. The efficiency of combustion process depends on several parameters such as oxygen supply, water content, velocity of inlet air and fuel temperature history and mixing properties. Here in this study the effect of addition of water content of various mole fractions on the emission of pollutants were studied with the help of CFD Simulation. In the first case the study was performed independently without the addition of water and the level of pollutants generated are numerically investigated. In the second case the effect of addition of water on the generation of pollutants are studied and the mass fraction of the individual species are compared extensively with supporting contour plots.