Interaction of turblence and chemistry in a low-swirl burner

Abstract

New combustion systems based on ultra-lean premixed combustion have the potential for dramatically reducing pollutant emissions in transportation systems, heat, and stationary power generation. However, lean premixed flames are highly susceptible to fluid-dynamical combustion instabilities, making robust and reliable systems difficult to design. Low-swirl burners are emerging as an important technology for meeting design requirements in terms of both reliability and emissions for next-generation combustion devices. In this paper, we present simlations of a laboratory-scale low-swirl burner using detailed chemistry and transport without incorporating explicit models for turbulence or turbulence/chemistry interaction. We consider two fuels, methane and hydrogen, each at two turbulent intensities. Here we examine some of the basic properties of the flow field and the flame structure. We focus on the differences in flame behavior for the two fuels, particularly on the hydrogen flame, which burns with a cellular structures.