Experimental study on the effects of mixture flow rate, equivalence ratio, oxygen enhancement, and geometrical parameters on propane-air premixed flame dynamics in non-adiabatic meso-scale reactors

Abstract

In the present study, the effects of reactive mixture flow rate, adding oxygen to propane-air mixture, geometrical parameters, and equivalence ratio on propane-air/oxygen premixed flame dynamics in non-adiabatic meso-scale reactors were experimentally investigated. During the experiments, seven flame regimes of blow-off, blow-out, asymmetric stationary, stationary-repetitive extinction and re-ignition (RERI), forced/self-RERI, RERI-flash-back, and flash-back were observed. The results showed that increasing the reactive mixture flow rate could generally promote variety of the flame regimes and also improve flame stability in the non-adiabatic meso-scale reactors, especially in 40% and 80% oxygen-enhanced cases. Also, the results demonstrated that increasing the reactor inner diameter and equivalence ratio generally extended propane-air- oxygen flame stability and its presence range in the non-adiabatic meso-scale reactors. Moreover, it was shown that increasing the reactor length and also increasing the added oxygen to propane-air mixture more than 40% promoted flame instability and consequently restricted propane-air-oxygen flame presence range in the non-adiabatic meso-scale reactors. Also, it was shown that variations in the mixture flow rate, the reactor length and inner diameter, equivalence ratio, and oxygen concentration in propane-air mixture could significantly influence the flame average propagation speed, acoustic, and chemiluminescence in the non-adiabatic meso-scale reactors.