Soot Formation Model Performance in Turbulent Non-Premix Ethylene Flame: A Comparison Study

Abstract

This paper presents results obtained from the application of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach to modelling of non-premixed turbulent ethylene sooting flame. The study focuses on comparing the two soot models available in the Fluent in predicting the soot level in the turbulent non-premixed ethylene flame. A standard k-ε model and Eddy Dissipation model are utilized for the representation of flow field and combustion of the flame being investigated. For performance comparison study, a single step soot model of Khan and Greeves and two-step soot model proposed by Tesner are tested. The results of calculations are compared with experimental data for a turbulent sooting flame taken from literature. The results of the study show that a combination of the standard k-ε turbulence model and eddy dissipation model is capable of producing reasonable predictions of temperature both in axial and radial profiles; although further downstream of the flame over-predicted temperatures are evidence. With regard to soot model performance study, it shows that the two-step model clearly performed far better than the single-step model in predicting the soot level in ethylene flame at both axial and radial profiles.