Effect of initial turbulence on explosion behavior of stoichiometric methane-ethylene-air mixtures in confined space

Abstract

The turbulent explosion process of stoichiometric CH4/C2H4/air mixtures was experimentally studied by using a standard 20 L sphere explosion system and it’s powder storage tank as the turbulence generator. Taking the initial turbulent environment and ethylene volume fraction as variables, the effects of turbulence intensity and fuel composition on explosion characteristics were studied. The results show that both turbulence intensity and ethylene content promote the explosion of the mixtures and increase the severity of the explosion, but the influence of turbulence intensity on combustion evolution mainly focuses on heat loss, while the influence of ethylene content mainly focuses on adiabatic explosion. When the ethylene ratios increase to 0.5 or more, the increase of explosion severity caused by turbulence is not obvious. The analysis of experimental results and numerical simulation shows that the influence of initial turbulence generated by powder storage tank on explosion is the result of the combined action of turbulent kinetic energy and combustible gas redistribution.