Simulation of Pollutant Emissions in a Small-Sized Combustion Chamber With a Gas Fuel for Various Regime Modes

Abstract

Abstract The study shows the results of the emission simulation in a small-sized combustion chamber. The influence of temperature and equivalence ratio on CO and CxHy in the combustion chamber was investigated. Experiments and calculations were carried out for the following modes: temperature at the inlet of the combustion chamber Tinlet = 323 ... 523 K; equivalence ratio φ = 0.2 ... 0.33; normalized flow rate at the inlet of the combustion chamber λ = 0.1 ... 0.3. The simulation of combustion of natural gas was carried out. The studies were conducted using CFD software and experimental methods. Measurements of the combustion products composition were carried out by the method of sampling collection and subsequent chromatographic analysis. The flow and combustion processes were simulated in a three-dimensional steady formulation using the Reynolds-averaged Novier-Stokes equations (RANS) and in a transient formulation using the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) method. The combustion processes were simulated by Flamelet Generated Manifold model in conjunction with the probability density function method (PDF). In addition to the above methods, the method of the reactor network model (RNM) was used to simulate the emission. As a result, a comparison of the calculated and experimental data of concentrations values of combustion products and emissions indices averaged over the combustion chamber outlet was conducted. According to the results of the calculated-experimental study obtained: - the simulated concentrations values of the main combustion products such as CO2 and H2O qualitatively and quantitatively coincide with the experimental data (the discrepancy is less than 5%) for all three approaches — RANS, LES, RNM; - when modeling CO emissions, the discrepancy between the calculated emission indices obtained by the RANS and LES methods is greatly underestimated relative to the experimental data, whereas the values calculated by the RNM method deviate from the experiment by less than 10%; - mass concentration values of unburned hydrocarbons obtained by the RANS method are overestimated relative to the experimental values, while using the LES with RNM methods, the discrepancy does not exceed 10%.