Study on Spray Characteristics and Breakup Mechanism of an SCR Injector

Abstract

Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) is currently one of the most efficient denitration technologies to reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions of diesel engines. AdBlue (urea water solution, UWS) is the carrier of the reducing agent of SCR, and the spray process of UWS is one of the critical factors affecting denitration efficiency. In this paper, a non-air-assisted pressure-driven full process spray (NPFPS) model is proposed to illustrate the breakup mechanism and the spray distribution properties of UWS through computational fluid dynamics (CFD). In the NPFPS model, the mechanism of the primary breakup is described by the volume of fluid (VOF) approach, which realizes the quantitative study of the critical parameters determining spray characteristics such as the breakup length, inclination angle, droplet size of the primary breakup, and primary velocity. The distribution of the spray after the primary breakup is depicted by the discrete phase model (DPM) coupled with the Taylor analogy breakup (TAB) model, through which the degree of secondary breakup can be obtained including quantitative studies of the droplet size distribution and velocity distribution in the different cross-sections. To verify the accuracy and feasibility of the NPFPS model, the experimental data are employed to compare with the simulation data. The results are in good agreement, which indicate the practical value of the model.