Simulation of Natural Gas Combustor Using CFD

Abstract

The combustors are the direct-fired heaters or burners where the fuel burns in stoichiometric composition and evolves an enormous amount of heat for process heating. The natural gas combustor utilizes natural gas as fuel for the combustion process. Several designs of natural gas combustors are available for the above-said process; based on the application, the design of the combustor is determined. The current research is motivated towards the CFD simulation of natural gas combustor using Species Transport model along with different Turbulence models (Standard k − ℇ, Realizable k − ℇ, RNG k − ℇ, Standard k − ω and SST k − ω) and Radiation models (Discrete Ordinate (DO), P1 and Rosseland) in two different simulation tools (Ansys Fluent and Star CCM+). The flow, thermal and combustion analysis of natural gas combustor is performed with the above-mentioned combustion, radiation and turbulence models in Ansys Fluent. The results obtained from the simulation using Ansys Fluent are compared with the available experimental results of Sayre et al. (Scaling Characteristics of Aerodynamics and Low-NOx Properties of Industrial Natural Gas Burners, The SCALING 400 Study, Part IV: The 300 kW BERL Test Results. International Flame Research Foundation, The Netherlands, 1994, [1]) to validate the adopted methodology. The best-predicted turbulence and radiation model, along with the Species Transport model, is used in Star CCM+. The simulated results in both the software are compared with the experimental results and are in close agreement.