CFD-CRN Study of NOx Formation in a High-Pressure Combustor Fired With Lean Premixed CH4 / H2 - Air Mixtures

Abstract

Abstract The main motivation of this study is to investigate detailed NOx and CO formation in high-pressure dump combustor fired with lean premixed methane-air mixture using CFD-CRN hybrid approach. Further, this study is extended to investigate the effect of H2 enrichment on emission formation in the same combustor. Three-dimensional steady RANS CFD simulations have been performed using a Flamelet Generated Manifold (FGM) model in Simcenter STAR-CCM+ 2019.2 with the DRM22 reduced mechanism. The CFD simulations have been modelled along with all three heat transfers modes: conduction, convection and radiation. The conjugate heat transfer (CHT) approach and participating media radiation modelling have been used here. Initially, CFD simulations are performed for five lean equivalence ratios (ϕ = 0.43–0.55, Tinlet = 673 K, Vinlet = 40 m/s) of pure methane-air mixture operating at 5 bar. The exit temperature and flame-length are compared with available experimental data. The automatic chemical reactor network has been constructed from CFD data and solved using the recently developed reactor network module of Simcenter STAR-CCM+ 2019.2 in a single framework for each cases. It is found out that the CRNs up to 10,000 PSRs can provide adequate accuracy in exit NOx predictions compared to experiments for pure methane cases. The contribution of NOx formation pathway, changes from N2O intermediate to thermal NO as equivalence ratio increases. Further studies are performed for two equivalence ratios (ϕ = 0.43 and 0.50 to simulate the impact of H2 addition (up to 40% by volume) on NOx formation pathways and CO emission. It is found out here that the contribution from NNH pathway increases for leaner equivalence ratio cases (ϕ = 0.43), while thermal pathway slightly increases for ϕ = 0.50 with increase in H2 content from 0% to 40%.