Transported PDF Modeling of Nonpremixed Turbulent CO/H₂/N₂ Jet Flames

Abstract

Turbulent CO/H₂/N₂ (“syngas”) flames are simulated using a transported composition probability density function (PDF) method. A consistent hybrid Lagrangian particle/Eulerian mesh algorithm is used to solve the modeled PDF transport equation. The model includes standard k–ϵ turbulence, gradient transport for scalars, and Euclidean minimum spanning tree (EMST) mixing. Sensitivities of model results to variations in the turbulence model, the treatment of radiation heat transfer, the choice of chemical mechanism, and the PDF mixing model are explored. A baseline model reproduces the measured mean and rms temperature, major species, and minor species profiles reasonably well, and captures the scaling that is observed in the experiments. Both our results and the literature suggest that further improvements can be realized with adjustments in the turbulence model, the radiation heat transfer model, and the chemical mechanism. Although radiation effects are relatively small in these flames, consideration of radiation is important for accurate NO prediction. Chemical mechanisms that have been developed specifically for fuels with high concentrations of CO and H₂ perform better than a methane mechanism that was not designed for this purpose. It is important to account explicitly for turbulence–chemistry interactions, although the details of the mixing model do not make a large difference in the results, within reasonable limits.

Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Combustion Science and Technology to view the free supplemental file.

Keywords:

• Nonpremixed turbulent flames
• Probability density function method
• Syngas flames

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As part of the National Energy Technology Laboratory's Regional University Alliance (NETL-RUA), a collaborative initiative of the NETL, this technical effort was performed under the RES contract DE-FE0004000. This work was supported in part through instrumentation funded by the National Science Foundation through grant OCI-0821527. The authors also thank Professor F. L. Dryer of Princeton for providing the C1 chemical mechanism and for helpful discussions.