The effects of water dilution on hydrogen, syngas, and ethylene flames at elevated pressure

Abstract

This work investigates experimentally and numerically the kinetic effects of water vapor addition on the burning rates of H2, H2/CO mixtures, and C2H4 from 1atm to 10atm at flame temperatures between 1600K and 1800K. Burning rates were measured using outwardly propagating spherical flames in a nearly constant pressure chamber. Results show good agreement with newly updated kinetic models for H2 flames. However, there is considerable disagreement between simulations and measurements for H2/CO and C2H4 flames at high pressure and high water vapor dilution. Both experiments and simulations show that water vapor addition causes a monotonic decrease in mass burning rate and the inhibitory effect increases with pressure. For hydrogen flames, water vapor addition reduces the critical pressure above which a negative pressure dependence of the burning rate is observed. However, for C2H4 flames, the burning rate always increases with pressure. The results also show that water vapor addition has the same effect as a pressure increase for H2 and H2/CO flames, shifting the reaction zone into a narrower window at higher temperatures. For all fuels, water vapor addition increases OH formation via H2O+O while reducing the overall active radical pool for hydrogen flames. For C2H4, the additional HO2 production pathway through HCO results in a dramatic difference in pressure dependence of the burning rate from that observed for hydrogen. The present work provides important additions to the experimental database for syngas and C0–C2 high pressure kinetic model validations.