Combustion and exhaust emission characteristics of low swirl injector

Abstract

The present experimental study aims to investigate the combustion and emission characteristics of the flow through a low swirl injector (LSI). An experimental study was carried out on the flame structure, the temperature distribution and the exhaust emission of low swirl pre-mixed combustion under the condition of different swirl number and different fuel composition. In order to qualitatively analyze the flame structure, the velocity distribution of the non-reacting flow through the LSI was measured using the particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique. Experimental results indicated that: (i) the LSI can generate a blue lift-off “W” type flame which consists of four clusters of flames connected together and holds up a long yellow pulsating flame, (ii) the blue flame structure converts the “W” type flame into the “broom” type flame and the distance between the front of the flame and the nozzle shortens with increasing swirl number, (iii) there exist high temperature region flanked by two peaks on the temperature profiles in the blue flame while uniform higher temperature in yellow pulsating flame, (iv) the NOx and CO emission level of the LSI mainly depends on the gas composition and thermal load.