Enhancement of biogas/air combustion by hydrogen addition at elevated temperatures

Abstract

In this study, combustion characteristics of various biogas/air mixtures with hydrogen addition at elevated temperatures were experimentally investigated using bunsen burner method. Methane, CH4, was diluted with different concentrations of carbon dioxide, CO2, 30 to 40% by volume, to prepare the biogas for testing. It is followed by the hydrogen, H2, enrichment within the range of 0 to 40% by volume and the temperature elevation of unburned gas till 440 K. Blowoff velocities were measured by lowering the jet velocity until a premixed flame could be stabilized at the nozzle exit, while laminar burning velocities were calculated by analyzing the shape of the directly captured premixed bunsen flames. The results showed that hydrogen had a positive effect on the blowoff velocity for all three fuel samples. Nonlinear growth of the blowoff velocity with hydrogen addition was associated to the dominance of methane-inhibited hydrogen combustion process. It was also observed that the increase in the initial temperature of the unburned mixture led to a linear increase of the blowoff velocity. Moreover, specific changes in flame structure such as flame height, standoff distance, and the existence of tip opening were attributed to the change in the blowoff velocity. The effect of CO2 content in the mixture was examined with regards to laminar burning velocity for all compositions. The outcome of the experiment showed that the biogas mixture with higher content of CO2 possessed lower values of laminar burning velocity over the wide range of equivalence ratios. A reduced GRI-Mech 3.0 was used to simulate the combustion of biogas/air mixtures with different compositions using ANSYS Fluent. The numerically simulated stable conical flames were compared with the experimental flames, in terms of flame structure, showing that the reduced GRI-Mech 3.0 was suitable for modeling the combustion of biogas/air mixtures.