Experimental and Numerical Study of the Laminar Burning Velocity of Biogas–Ammonia–Air Premixed Flames

Abstract

Biogas is a gas resulting from the digestion of biomass, which means transforming organic waste into energy. It is composed essentially of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) and can also contain ammonia (NH3) as an impurity. Biogas is generally used to generate electricity or produce heat in a cogeneration system. With the renewed interest in ammonia and the increasing development of biogas caused by the urge for an energetic transition, those two carbon-neutral fuels are being investigated as a mixture in this study through the laminar burning velocity (LBV). In this paper, the LBV of biogas ammonia air mixtures are investigated experimentally for the first time over a wide range of equivalence ratios and ammonia concentrations. The biogas studied was 60% CH4 and 40% CO2 in volume. The NH3 concentration in the fuel varied from 0 to 50% vol. while the equivalence ratio varied from 0.8 to 1.2. The experiments were conducted at constant pressure in a constant volume vessel at 300 K and 1 bar. Adding ammonia to biogas decreases the LBV while the Markstein length is not very sensitive to ammonia addition. The CEU-NH3-Mech-1.1 and Okafor mechanisms show good agreement with the experimental laminar burning velocity. The effect of radiative heat losses on the measurement is also investigated.