Turbulent Non-premixed Jet Flames Research Articles

Implementation of the Scalar Dissipation Rate in the REDIM Concept and its Validation for the Piloted Non-Premixed Turbulent Jet Flames

In order to address the impact of the concentration gradients on the chemistry – turbulence interaction in turbulent flames, the REDIM reduced chemistry is constructed incorporating the scalar dissipation rate, which is a key quantity describing the turbulent mixing process. This is achieved by providing a variable gradient estimate in the REDIM evolution equation. In such case, the REDIM reduced chemistry is tabulated as a function of the reduced coordinates and the scalar dissipation rate as an additional progress variable. The constructed REDIM is based on a detailed transport model including the differential diffusion, and is validated for a piloted non-premixed turbulent jet flames (Sandia Flame D and E). The results show that the newly generated REDIM can reproduce the thermo-kinetic quantities very well, and the differential molecular diffusion effect can also be well captured.

Conditional moment closure method with tabulated chemistry in adiabatic turbulent nonpremixed jet flames

The conditional moment closure (CMC) method with tabulated chemistry is proposed to reduce the computational load for integration of stiff reaction steps in the conventional CMC methods. It is based on the assumption that temperature and all species except CO and CO2 adjust fast enough so that they can be uniquely determined by the single reaction progress variable given as the sum of CO and CO2 mass fractions. The CMC equations are solved for the conditional reaction progress variable, Qpv, whereas the other species mass fractions and the reaction rates including that for Qpv are retrieved from lookup tables. A steady homogeneous form of the conditional variance and covariance equations are solved to construct the second-order closure table to be consistent with Steady Laminar Flamelet Model (SLFM)-based first-order closure. Good agreement is shown between the results by integrated and tabulated chemistry in both the first-order and the second-order CMC for Sandia Flames D, E and F. The overall computational time is reduced to about 0.5% of that by the conventional CMC method involving integration of the detailed reaction mechanism for all species and temperature.

Effects of pressure on soot production in piloted turbulent non-premixed jet flames

Laser-induced incandescence (LII) was used to quantify the soot volume fraction in five piloted turbulent non-premixed C2H4-N2 jet flames at elevated pressures. In one series of flames, the bulk jet velocity was held constant as the pressure was increased from 1 bar (Re = 10,000) to 3 bar (Re = 30,000), and then 5 bar (Re = 50,000). In the other series, a Reynolds number of 10,000 was held constant at 1 bar, 3 bar, and 5 bar. LII measurements were calibrated with laminar diffusion flames at each pressure using 2D diffuse line-of-sight attenuation. Mean and RMS soot volume fractions along the flame centerline exhibit Gaussian profiles for all of the flames. The magnitude of soot volume fraction and the spatial soot distribution are enhanced by increases in pressure. In both series of flames, the peak mean soot volume fraction scales with the pressure as p2.2. In the constant velocity series, the scaling drops to p1.5 if the volume-integrated mean soot volume fraction on a per fuel mass basis is considered instead. At 3 bar, a threefold increase in Re leads to a decrease in the mean soot volume fraction despite the decrease in soot intermittency. At 5 bar, a fivefold increase in Re results in soot intermittency near zero at the flame’s center and a slight increase in the mean soot volume fraction.

Soot formation in turbulent flames of ethylene/hydrogen/ammonia

This paper presents an experimental study of turbulent non-premixed jet flames of ethylene/nitrogen where the nitrogen is substituted with different proportions of hydrogen and/or ammonia. The focus is largely on the effects of hydrogen and ammonia on soot production in turbulent flames. A combination of pointwise, laser-induced fluorescence in the visible and UV bands (LIF-UV–visible), and laser-induced incandescence (LII) is used to measure soot precursors and soot along the flame centerline. All signals are collected at a repetition rate of 10 Hz with fast photomultiplier tubes to resolve the time decay. In a separate experiment, joint imaging of LIF-OH CH is also performed at a repetition rate of 10 kHz. Hydrogen substitution is found to increase the production of soot, whereas ammonia substitution inhibits soot formation. The peak mean soot volume fraction is almost a factor of 3 lower in the 25% ammonia case in comparison to the 25% nitrogen case. The mean signal decay time constant decreases with ammonia substitution, implying the formation of smaller soot nanoparticles. The mean signal decay time constant remains unaffected with hydrogen substitution. Measured peaks in LIF-CH and LIF-OH are reduced with ammonia substitution but only in regions upstream of where soot is formed. Further downstream in the sooting region, neither OH nor CH appear to be affected by the substitution of N 2 with H 2 or NH 3 .

On the combined effect of internal and external intermittency in turbulent non-premixed jet flames

This paper analyzes the combined effect of internal intermittency and external intermittency on the dynamics of small-scale turbulent mixing in a turbulent non-premixed jet flame. The phenomenon of external intermittency in turbulent jet flames originates from a very thin layer, known as turbulent/non-turbulent interface, that separates the inner turbulent core from the outer irrotational surrounding fluid. The impact of external intermittency on turbulence is evaluated across the jet flame by the self-similarity scaling of higher-order structure functions of the mixture fraction. It is shown that the scaling of structure functions exhibits a growing departure from the prediction of classical scaling laws toward the edge of the flame. Empirical evidence is provided that this departure is primarily due to external intermittency and the associated break down of self-similarity. External intermittency creates local gradients that are significantly more intense compared to those created by internal intermittency alone. As chemical reactions usually take place in thin layers in the vicinity of the turbulent/non-turbulent interface, an accurate statistical description of these intense events is necessary to predict the turbulence-chemistry interaction. The study is based on data from a highly-resolved direct numerical simulation of a temporally evolving planar jet flame.

The effect of fuel composition and Reynolds number on soot formation processes in turbulent non-premixed toluene jet flames

The soot formation processes in three different turbulent prevaporized non-premixed toluene jet flames stabilized on a jet-in-hot-coflow (JHC) burner were investigated in this study. The jet Reynolds number and the stoichiometric mixture fraction were varied in order to manipulate the flow time scales and the chemistry, respectively. Time-resolved laser-induced incandescence (TiRe-LII), non-linear two-line atomic fluorescence of indium (nTLAF), and OH planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF) were simultaneously applied to yield spatially resolved and instantaneous fields of soot volume fraction, primary particle size, temperature, and OH. The mean distributions of the detected quantities are used to identify major differences among the flames. The highest soot loading is observed for the low Reynolds number and low stoichiometric mixture fraction flame. However, this flame features also the lowest temperature and primary particle size. Based on these observations, the simultaneously detected data sets and flamelet computations are employed to elucidate differences in the soot formation pathways in the flames. The analyses reveal that the high soot loading causes greater heat losses in the low Reynolds number and low stoichiometric mixture fraction flame. This has a significant impact on the soot formation pathways and causes a reduction in the particle size.

A new modeling approach for mixture fraction statistics based on dissipation elements

The probabilty density function (PDF) of the mixture fraction is of integral importance to a large number of combustion models. Here, a novel modelling approach for the PDF of the mixture fraction is proposed which employs dissipation elements. While being restricted to the commonly used mean and variance of the mixture fraction, this model approach individually considers contributions of the laminar regions as well as the turbulent core and the turbulent/non-turbulent interface region. The later region poses a highly intermittent part of the flow which is of high relevance to the non-premixed combustion of pure hydrocarbon fuels. The model assumptions are justified by means of the gradient trajectory based analysis of high fidelity direct numerical simulation (DNS) datasets of two turbulent inert configurations and a turbulent non-premixed jet flame. The new dissipation element based model is validated against the DNS datasets and a comparison with the beta PDF is presented.

In-Situ Adaptive Manifolds: Enabling computationally efficient simulations of complex turbulent reacting flows

Reduced-order manifold approaches to turbulent combustion modeling traditionally involve precomputation of manifold solutions and pretabulation of the thermochemical database versus a small number of manifold variables. However, additional manifold variables are required as the complexity of turbulent combustion processes increases through consideration of, for example, multi-modal, non-adiabatic, or non-isobaric combustion, or combustion featuring multiple and/or inhomogeneous inlets. This increase in the number of manifold variables comes with an increase in the computational cost of precomputing a greater number of manifold solutions, most of which are never actually utilized in a CFD calculation. The memory required to store the pretabulated high-dimensional thermochemical database also increases, practically limiting the complexity of manifold-based combustion models. In this work, a new In-Situ Adaptive Manifolds (ISAM) approach is developed that overcomes this limitation by combining ‘on-the-fly’ calculation of manifold solutions with In-Situ Adaptive Tabulation (ISAT), enabling the use of more complex manifold-based turbulent combustion models. The performance of ISAM is evaluated via LES of turbulent nonpremixed jet flames with both hydrogen and hydrocarbon fuels. A performance assessment indicates that the computational overhead associated with ISAM compared to pretabulation ranges from negligible up to a factor of two, with most of this overhead associated with convolution of the thermochemical state against a presumed subfilter PDF. In addition, the memory requirements of ISAM are more than two orders of magnitude less than conventional tabulation. These results demonstrate the potential for ISAM to accommodate significantly more complex manifold-based combustion models.

Hierarchical model form uncertainty quantification for turbulent combustion modeling

All models invoke assumptions that result in model errors. The objective of model form uncertainty quantification is to translate these assumptions into mathematical statements of uncertainty. If each assumption in a model can be isolated, then the uncertainties associated with each assumption can be independently assessed. In situations where a series of assumptions leads to a hierarchy of models with nested assumptions, physical principles from a higher-fidelity model can be used to directly estimate a physics-based uncertainty in a lower-fidelity model. Turbulent nonpremixed combustion models fall into a natural hierarchy from the full governing equations to Conditional Moment Closure to flamelet-like models to thermodynamic equilibrium, and, at each stage of the hierarchy, a single assumption can be isolated. In this work, estimates are developed for the uncertainties associated with each assumption in the hierarchy. The general method identifies a trigger parameter that can be obtained with information only from the lower-fidelity model that is used to estimate the error in the lower-fidelity model using only physical principles from the higher-fidelity model. Starting from the lowest fidelity model, the trigger parameters identified in this work are the product of a chemical time scale and the scalar dissipation rate for the equilibrium chemistry model, which characterizes the errors associated with neglecting finite-rate chemistry and transport; the reciprocal of the product of a generalized Lagrangian flow time and the scalar dissipation rate for the steady flamelet model, which characterizes the errors associated with neglecting flow history effects; and the relative magnitude of the conditional fluctuations for Conditional Moment Closure. The approach is applied in LES to a turbulent nonpremixed simple jet flame to quantify the errors associated with the equilibrium chemistry model and the steady flamelet model. The results indicate that errors associated with neglecting finite-rate chemistry and transport in the equilibrium chemistry model are dominant upstream while errors associated with neglecting flow history in the steady flamelet model become more important downstream.

Height of turbulent non-premixed jet flames at elevated pressure

Height of turbulent non-premixed jet flames at elevated pressure

Large Eddy Simulation of soot evolution in turbulent reacting flows: Strain-Sensitive Transport Approach for Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) are confined to spatially intermittent regions of low scalar dissipation rates due to their slow formation chemistry. The length scales of these regions are on the order of the Kolmogorov scale or smaller, where molecular diffusion dominates over turbulent mixing irrespective of the large-scale turbulent Reynolds number. A strain-sensitivity parameter is proposed to identify such species. A Strain-Sensitive Transport Approach (SSTA) is then developed to model this differential transport in the nonpremixed flamelet equations. Specifically, the strain-sensitive species are modeled with their non-unity molecular effective Lewis numbers, while the remaining species are modeled with unity effective Lewis numbers. An a priori analysis of nonpremixed flamelet solutions reveals that the flame temperature and strain-insensitive species (e.g., major products of combustion, acetylene, etc.) profiles from the proposed SSTA closely match those from the unity effective Lewis number approach, but the mass fractions of strain-sensitive species (e.g., naphthalene) are significantly modified compared to the unity effective Lewis number approach and are consistent with Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) data. This new SSTA model is implemented within a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) framework, applied to a series of laboratory-scale turbulent nonpremixed sooting jet flames, and validated via comparisons with experimental measurements of temperature and soot volume fraction. Both the unity effective Lewis number approach and SSTA model provide temperature predictions in good agreement with the experimental data, but the non-unity molecular effective Lewis number approach overpredicts the flame length. Compared to the unity effective Lewis number approach, the spatial distribution of soot volume fraction predicted by SSTA is in better agreement with the experimental measurements in terms of the upstream growth of the soot volume fraction and the location of its peak value along the centerline, both of which strongly depend on accurate predictions of the PAH mass fraction. The maximum soot volume fraction is minimally influenced and in good agreement with the experimental measurements. Finally, with this new SSTA model, the influence of global strain rate on turbulent nonpremixed sooting jet flames is analyzed to find that, even though PAH is inversely proportional to the global strain rate, the soot volume fraction may not be inversely proportional to the global strain rate due to an increase in the acetylene surface growth rate coefficient with global strain rate.

Large eddy simulation of a turbulent non-premixed flame based on the flamelet-generated manifolds approach and a reduced mechanism verification

This work presents the design of a large eddy simulation based on the flamelet-generated manifolds (FGM) approach to evaluate a Sandia Flame D, which is a turbulent non-premixed piloted jet flame. The detailed kinetic mechanism of the Gas Research Institute (GRI3.0, which contains 53 species and 325 elementary reactions), as well as a reduced mechanism, are employed to describe combustion. This reduced mechanism, containing 19 species and 68 elementary reactions, is proposed based on the direct relation graphs with error-propagation (DRGEP) method and a species sensitivity analysis from the GRI3.0. Both the two mechanisms are introduced into Fluent to simulate a Sandia Flame D, and the numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental data, which indicates the accurate predictive capability of the LES/FGM method in combustion modeling and that the proposed reduced mechanism can be applied to the numerical simulation in practical engineering problems.

Effect of shock structure on stabilization and blow-off of hydrogen jet flames

Under-expanded hydrogen jet has characteristic shock structure immediately downstream of the nozzle exit. The shock structure depends on the ratio pEX/pA, i.e. the ratio of nozzle exit to ambient pressure, and the distributions of velocity and concentration in an under-expanded hydrogen jet depend on characteristics of the shock structure. Therefore, the shock structure should affect the blow-off behaviour of under-expanded hydrogen jet flame. Since this issue has not been investigated in detail, this study aims to close this knowledge gap. The effect of changes in shock structure on lift-off length and blow-off conditions for non-premixed turbulent hydrogen free jet flame has been experimentally investigated. The shock structure was varied by using three types of nozzles: convergent, straight and divergent nozzles. Inlet diameters of nozzles change from 0.31 to 1.04 mm and outlet diameters from 0.34 to 1.7 mm. The static pressure and the ratio of cross-section area at the nozzle inlet to that at the outlet were varying parameters in this study. Hydrogen was horizontally spouted through a nozzle to atmosphere. The maximum static pressure in a nozzle was 13.2 MPa. The experiments revealed that when the hydrogen jet had sequential shock cell structures, which occurred in the range of pEX/pA smaller than 2.45, a higher mass flow rate of hydrogen was needed for the stabilization of a jet flame than that for pEX/pA larger than 2.45 and that when closed to the ideal expansion (pEX/pA = 1), the mass flow rate for stable flame became maximum. In addition, it was observed that the lift-off length of stable flames followed with sequential shock cell structures were almost the same when the minimum cross-section area of used nozzles was constant. However, when hydrogen jet had a shock structure with single Mach disk, the lift-off lengths and the minimum mass flow rate required for the stable jet flame were decreasing with the decrease of the cross-sectional area ratio of the nozzle exit to inlet.

Blowout of non-premixed turbulent jet flames with coflow under microgravity condition

The blowout behavior of non-premixed turbulent coflow jet flames under microgravity environment was studied experimentally by utilizing a 3.6 s drop tower. Variations of flames leading to liftoff as well as blowout were examined by varying the coflow velocity and compared with those obtained under the normal gravity condition. A modeling work was conducted to incorporate the effects of the gravity (buoyancy) and coflow velocity on blowout behavior. Major findings include: (1) the flame length in microgravity was longer than that in normal gravity and decreased with increasing coflow velocity. The flame in microgravity showed more intense yellow luminosity with larger sooting zone; (2) the flame liftoff height increased with increasing coflow velocity in both gravity levels. The flame base was closer to the burner in microgravity as compared with that in normal gravity; (3) the blowout velocity in microgravity was appreciably larger than that obtained in normal gravity; and (4) a physical model based on Damköhler number was developed by using similarity solutions to characterize the differences in the blowout limits considering both the coflow and gravity (buoyancy) effects. The proposed model can successfully predict the experimental data. This work provided new data and basic scaling analysis for blowout limit of non-premixed turbulent jet flames considering both the coflow and gravity (buoyancy) effects.

Large Eddy Simulation of soot evolution in turbulent reacting flows: Presumed subfilter PDF model for soot–turbulence–chemistry interactions

In turbulent reacting flows, soot evolution is strongly influenced by small-scale soot–turbulence–chemistry interactions. Specifically, soot is formed during combustion of fuel-rich mixtures and, in non-smoking flames, is rapidly oxidized at slightly fuel-rich mixtures before being transported by turbulence into fuel-lean mixtures. Furthermore, different soot evolution mechanisms are dominant over distinct regions of mixture fraction. For these reasons, a new subfilter PDF is proposed to account for this distribution of soot in mixture fraction space. In this model, the sooting mode of a soot subfilter PDF is locally activated only at fuel-rich mixture fractions where surface growth is locally faster than oxidation. This model is first validated a priori against a recent DNS database of a turbulent nonpremixed jet flame. Compared to a subfilter PDF model without any mixture fraction dependence, a significant decrease in the oxidation source term is observed, while the surface growth source term remains hardly affected. This new model is implemented within a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) framework, applied to two laboratory-scale turbulent nonpremixed sooting jet flames, and validated via comparisons with experimental measurements of time-averaged centerline temperature and soot volume fraction. Both the new model and the previous model predict the temperature fairly well. However, compared to the previous model, the soot volume fraction predicted by the new model is significantly increased and in much better agreement with the experimental measurements. In addition, the sensitivity to the subfilter PDF is significantly greater than the sensitivity to grid resolution and is greater or at least comparable to the sensitivity to chemical mechanism.

Numerical investigation of embedding some hot obstacles in a low speed reacting flow of the moderate or intense low-oxygen dilution in a jet-in-hot-coflow

Given the daily growth of pollutant emissions in this age of technology, every method that can increase the efficiency of the combustion as well as reduce the pollution is very important to consider. One way to reach this goal is moderate or intense low oxygen dilution. In the present work, this technology of turbulent nonpremixed CH4-H2 jet flames has investigated in various working conditions in Dally burner, numerically. In this regard, the finite volume method in OpenFOAM package has used with k-ε Re-Normalization Group as well as the discrete ordinates radiation model. Furthermore, the eddy dissipation concept for interaction between turbulence and chemistry in combination with the detailed reaction mechanism have been employed. At first, the results are compared with the experimental data and after validating the obtained results of the solution, the moderate or intense low-oxygen dilution combustion is investigated by putting some hot obstacles in the burner. The results show that the hot obstacle has a role similar to the hot spot and helps this condition of combustion to reduce the initial cost in order to preheat the hot oxidizer co-flow. This means that putting the hot obstacle in the burner causes to reduce the preheat temperature and the energy consumption per second up to 300 K and 17.9%, respectively, while it increases the turbulence intensity, reaction zone, outlet CO2 and H2O species while reduces NOx and CO emissions.

Large Eddy Simulation on the Effects of Pressure on Syngas/Air Turbulent Nonpremixed Jet Flames

ABSTRACT The influence of increasing pressure on nonpremixed syngas/air turbulent jet flames is numerically investigated using large eddy simulations in conjunction with a steady laminar flamelet approach. The applicability of the steady flamelet approach is assessed through an extensive parametric study of laminar counterflow flames and tangential stretching rate analysis on target flame structures at different pressures. Two sets of large eddy simulations, exploring pressure values up to atm, are carried out. The first one (series A) is characterized by a constant jet Reynolds number, while the second one (series B) is characterized by a constant jet inlet velocity. Both campaigns show narrower flame brushes and reduced radical concentrations with increasing pressure. While for series A the flame length is not sensitive to pressure, a longer flame brush is noticed for series B, being mainly caused by the increased mass flow rate. The sensitivity of the local flame behavior to pressure, such as the OH layer thickness and position, is compared to the available experimental results, showing similar trends with a satisfactory agreement.

Simultaneous high-speed imaging of temperature, heat-release rate, and multi-species concentrations in turbulent jet flames.

We report the high-speed imaging of multi-species and multi-parameter combustion diagnostics for turbulent non-premixed jet flames using a three-legged burst-mode laser system. Simultaneous OH/CH2O planar laser-induced fluorescence and Rayleigh-scattering imaging measurements at a 10-kHz rate are obtained. OH and CH2O concentrations, flame temperatures, and heat-release rates are simultaneously acquired in two-dimensions at 10 kHz.

Influence of flow topology and scalar structure on flame-tangential diffusion in turbulent non-premixed combustion

Flamelet-based combustion models have been extensively used in the modeling of turbulent non-premixed combustion due to their notable advantages in reducing computational cost. The classical one-dimensional flamelet equations are derived based on an assumption: flame-normal transport of thermochemical state variables in mixture fraction gradient direction dominates over flame-tangential transport along iso-surfaces of mixture fraction. The motivation of this work is to quantify the contribution of tangential diffusion (TD) and seek the source of TD, since several recent studies have shown that TD effects may play an important role in the regions with large curvature and finite-rate chemistry. In this work, the most probable cause and effect chain that elucidates the source of TD in a turbulent non-premixed jet flame is proposed for the first time from a flow topology perspective. To this end, local flow topology and its effects on scalar structure are first investigated. It is found that the local flow structures with unstable focus compressing (UFC) topology have the highest probability of large compressive strain and that the negative correlation between curvature and strain strongly depends on local flow topology, scalar structure and reaction. Then, the influence of flow topology and scalar structure on the relevance of TD is assessed with the angle between reactive scalars and mixture fraction. The results show that TD effects mainly exist in the regions with high curvatures and low strain rates or scalar dissipation rates. These findings suggest that the local flow structures with low probability of UFC topology tend to cause significant flame-tangential diffusion in the turbulent non-premixed flame.

Large Eddy Simulation of a Syngas Jet Flame: Effects of Preferential Diffusion and Turbulence–Chemistry Interaction

A large eddy simulation of the turbulent syngas non-premixed jet flame of Sandia ETH/Zurich B is conducted using an in-house version of FireFOAM, a fire simulation solver within OpenFOAM. Combustio...