CO and H2O Time-Histories in Shock-Heated Blends of Methane and Ethane for Assessment of a Chemical Kinetics Model

Author(s):  
O. Mathieu ◽  
C. R. Mulvihill ◽  
E. L. Petersen ◽  
Y. Zhang ◽  
H. J. Curran

Methane and ethane are the two main components of natural gas and typically constitute more than 95% of it. In this study, a mixture of 90% CH4/10% C2H6 diluted in 99% Ar was studied at fuel lean (equiv. ratio = 0.5) conditions, for pressures around 1, 4, and 10 atm. Using laser absorption diagnostics, the time histories of CO and H2O were recorded between 1400 and 1800 K. Water is a final product from combustion, and its formation is a good marker of the completion of the combustion process. Carbon monoxide is an intermediate combustion species, a good marker of incomplete/inefficient combustion, as well as a regulated pollutant for the gas turbine industry. Measurements such as these species time histories are important for validating and assessing chemical kinetics models beyond just ignition delay times and laminar flame speeds. Time-history profiles for these two molecules were compared to a state-of-the-art detailed kinetics mechanism as well as to the well-established GRI 3.0 mechanism. Results show that the H2O profile is accurately reproduced by both models. However, discrepancies are observed for the CO profiles. Under the conditions of this study, the CO profiles typically increase rapidly after an induction time, reach a maximum, and then decrease. This maximum CO mole fraction is often largely over-predicted by the models, whereas the depletion rate of CO past this peak is often over-estimated for pressures above 1 atm.

Author(s):  
O. Mathieu ◽  
C. Mulvihill ◽  
E. L. Petersen ◽  
Y. Zhang ◽  
H. J. Curran

Methane and ethane are the two main components of natural gas and typically constitute more than 95% of it. In this study, a mixture of 90% CH4 /10% C2H6 diluted in 99% Ar was studied at fuel lean (ϕ = 0.5) conditions, for pressures around 1, 4, and 10 atm. Using laser absorption diagnostics, the time histories of CO and H2O were recorded between 1400 and 1800 K. Water is a final product from hydrocarbon combustion, and following its formation is a good marker of the completion of the combustion process. Carbon monoxide is an intermediate combustion species, a good marker of incomplete/inefficient combustion, as well as a regulated pollutant for the gas turbine industry. Measurements such as these species time histories are important for validating and assessing chemical kinetics models beyond just ignition delay times and laminar flame speeds. Time-history profiles for these two molecules measured herein were compared to a modern, state-of-the-art detailed kinetics mechanism as well as to the well-established GRI 3.0 mechanism. Results show that the H2O profile is accurately reproduced by both models. However, discrepancies are observed for the CO profiles. Under the conditions of this study, the measured CO profiles typically increase rapidly after an induction time, reach a maximum and then decrease. This maximum CO mole fraction is often largely over-predicted by the models, whereas the depletion rate of CO past this peak is often over-estimated by the models for pressures above 1 atm. This study demonstrates the need to improve on the accuracy of the HCCO reactions involved in CO formation for pressures of practical interest for the gas turbine industry.


Author(s):  
Michael C. Krejci ◽  
Olivier Mathieu ◽  
Andrew J. Vissotski ◽  
Sankaranarayanan Ravi ◽  
Travis G. Sikes ◽  
...  

Laminar flame speeds and ignition delay times have been measured for hydrogen and various compositions of H2/CO (syngas) at elevated pressures and elevated temperatures. Two constant-volume cylindrical vessels were used to visualize the spherical growth of the flame through the use of a schlieren optical setup to measure the laminar flame speed of the mixture. Hydrogen experiments were performed at initial pressures up to 10 atm and initial temperatures up to 443 K. A syngas composition of 50/50 by volume was chosen to demonstrate the effect of carbon monoxide on H2-O2 chemical kinetics at standard temperature and pressures up to 10 atm. All atmospheric mixtures were diluted with standard air, while all elevated-pressure experiments were diluted with a He:O2 ratio of 7:1 to minimize instabilities. The laminar flame speed measurements of hydrogen and syngas are compared to available literature data over a wide range of equivalence ratios, where good agreement can be seen with several data sets. Additionally, an improved chemical kinetics model is shown for all conditions within the current study. The model and the data presented herein agree well, which demonstrates the continual, improved accuracy of the chemical kinetics model. A high-pressure shock tube was used to measure ignition delay times for several baseline compositions of syngas at three pressures across a wide range of temperatures. The compositions of syngas (H2/CO) by volume presented in this study included 80/20, 50/50, 40/60, 20/80, and 10/90, all of which are compared to previously published ignition delay times from a hydrogen-oxygen mixture to demonstrate the effect of carbon monoxide addition. Generally, an increase in carbon monoxide increases the ignition delay time, but there does seem to be a pressure dependency. At low temperatures and pressures higher than about 12 atm, the ignition delay times appear to be indistinguishable with an increase in carbon monoxide. However, at high temperatures the relative composition of H2 and CO has a strong influence on ignition delay times. Model agreement is good across the range of the study, particularly at the elevated pressures.


Author(s):  
Gilles Bourque ◽  
Darren Healy ◽  
Henry Curran ◽  
Christopher Zinner ◽  
Danielle Kalitan ◽  
...  

High-pressure experiments and chemical kinetics modeling were performed to generate a database and a chemical kinetic model that can characterize the combustion chemistry of methane-based fuel blends containing significant levels of heavy hydrocarbons (up to 37.5% by volume). Ignition delay times were measured in two different shock tubes and in a rapid compression machine at pressures up to 34 atm and temperatures from 740 to 1660 K. Laminar flame speeds were also measured at pressures up to 4 atm using a high-pressure vessel with optical access. Two different fuel blends containing ethane, propane, n-butane, and n-pentane added to methane were studied at equivalence ratios varying from lean (0.3) to rich (2.0). This paper represents the most comprehensive set of experimental ignition and laminar flame speed data available in the open literature for CH4/C2H6/C3H8/C4H10/C5H12 fuel blends with significant levels of C2+ hydrocarbons. Using these data, a detailed chemical kinetics model, based on current and recent work by the authors, was compiled and refined. The predictions of the model are very good over the entire range of ignition delay times, considering the fact that the data set is so thorough. Nonetheless, some improvements to the model can still be made with respect to ignition times at the lowest temperatures and for the laminar flame speeds at pressures above 1 atm and rich conditions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 735-742 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clayton R. Mulvihill ◽  
Charles L. Keesee ◽  
Travis Sikes ◽  
Rodolfo S. Teixeira ◽  
Olivier Mathieu ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
S. Soma Sundaram ◽  
V. Babu

The stability of the combustion process in a V-gutter stabilized combustor is numerically investigated. To this end, 3D compressible turbulent and unsteady reacting flow calculations have been carried out using LES. The time history of the pressure at several locations is used to determine the frequency and amplitude of the oscillations along with the mode shapes. A shift in the dominant mode of the frequency spectra from the acoustic mode to the hydrodynamic mode is observed. A POD analysis of pressure time histories on the symmetry plane also corroborates this trend. The computational domain is divided into several subvolumes in the wake region of the V-gutter and the time histories of pressure, temperature, and heat release are collected in the individual volumes. It is seen that the fluctuation of pressure and heat release tend to oscillate from being in phase to out of phase over a time period. Unstable regions predicted by the Rayleigh index across a plane are shown to be different from those predicted in a volume owing to the three dimensionality of the flame. Quite interestingly, the calculated values of the indices show the combustor to be most unstable for an equivalence ratio of 0.1665 which is not the leanest one considered here. The global Rayleigh index is shown to correlate well with the amplitude of the dominant mode.


Author(s):  
Hui Xu ◽  
Leon A. LaPointe ◽  
Robin J. Bremmer

Gaseous fueled spark ignited (SI) engines are often developed using pipeline quality natural gas as the fuel. However, natural gas engines are occasionally expected by customers to accommodate different fuel compositions when deployed in the field. Depending on the source or production processing of the fuel and the ambient conditions, gaseous fuels can have different levels of heavy hydrocarbons and/or significant levels of diluents when compared to natural gas. In recent years, there are increasing interests in using synthesis gas (syngas) from renewable sources in gaseous fueled spark ignition engines. This work investigated syngas compositions from different production processes and describes a methodology to predict engine performance using syngas. Syngas composition variations can provide different laminar flame speeds (LFS), which can result in changes in combustion burn rate, heat release rate and knock likelihood, if the engine combustion process is not optimized appropriately. It is challenging to obtain LFS data at the high pressure and temperature conditions that are characteristic of the piston engine combustion process. It has proven to be effective to employ a chemical kinetics solver using an appropriate chemical kinetics mechanism to obtain LFS values under piston engine combustion conditions. Alternative chemical kinetics mechanisms were investigated to identify one which best characterized combustion performance relative to detailed rig and engine measurements. With this appropriate chemical kinetics mechanism, LFS results are now used to guide natural gas engine combustion tuning when using syngas as a fuel. Engine performance is predicted in terms of NOx emissions and knock likelihood using the in-house developed methodology.


Author(s):  
Gilles Bourque ◽  
Darren Healy ◽  
Henry Curran ◽  
Christopher Zinner ◽  
Danielle Kalitan ◽  
...  

High-pressure experiments and chemical kinetics modeling were performed to generate a database and a chemical kinetic model that can characterize the combustion chemistry of methane-based fuel blends containing significant levels of heavy hydrocarbons (up to 37.5% by volume). Ignition delay times were measured in two different shock tubes and in a rapid compression machine at pressures up to 34 atm and temperatures from 740 K to 1660 K. Laminar flame speeds were also measured at pressures up to 4 atm using a high-pressure vessel with optical access. Two different fuel blends containing ethane, propane, n-butane, and n-pentane added to methane were studied at equivalence ratios varying from lean (0.3) to rich (2.0). This paper represents the most comprehensive set of experimental ignition and laminar flame speed data available in the open literature for CH4/C2H6/C3H8/C4H10/C5H12 fuel blends with significant levels of C2+ hydrocarbons. Using these data, a detailed chemical kinetics model based on current and recent work by the authors was compiled and refined. The predictions of the model are very good over the entire range of ignition delay times, considering the fact that the data set is so thorough. Nonetheless, some improvements to the model can still be made with respect to ignition times at the lowest temperatures and for the laminar flame speeds at pressures above 1 atm and at rich conditions.


Fuels ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Olivier Mathieu ◽  
Sean P. Cooper ◽  
Sulaiman A. Alturaifi ◽  
Eric L. Petersen

Modern gas turbines use combustion chemistry during the design phase to optimize their efficiency and reduce emissions of regulated pollutants such as NOx. The detailed understanding of the interactions during NOx and natural gas during combustion is therefore necessary for this optimization step. To better assess such interactions, NO2 was used as a sole oxidant during the oxidation of CH4 and C2H6 (the main components of natural gas) in a shock tube. The evolution of the CO mole fraction was followed by laser-absorption spectroscopy from dilute mixtures at around 1.2 atm. The experimental CO profiles were compared to several modern detailed kinetics mechanisms from the literature: models tuned to characterize NOx-hydrocarbons interactions, base-chemistry models (C0–C4) that contain a NOx sub-mechanism, and a nitromethane model. The comparison between the models and the experimental profiles showed that most modern NOx-hydrocarbon detailed kinetics mechanisms are not very accurate, while the base chemistry models were lacking accuracy overall as well. The nitromethane model and one hydrocarbon/NOx model were in relatively good agreement with the data over the entire range of conditions investigated, although there is still room for improvement. The numerical analysis of the results showed that while the models considered predict the same reaction pathways from the fuels to CO, they can be very inconsistent in the selection of the reaction rate coefficients. This variation is especially true for ethane, for which a larger disagreement with the data was generally observed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 699 ◽  
pp. 111-118
Author(s):  
Rui Shi ◽  
Chang Hui Wang ◽  
Yan Nan Chang

Based on GRI3.0, we study the main chemical kinetics process about reactions of singlet oxygen O2(a1Δg) and ozone O3 with methane-air combustion products, inherit and further develop research in chemical kinetics process with enhancement effects on methane-air mixed combustion by these two molecules. In addition, influence of these two molecules on ignition delay time and flame speed of laminar mixture are considered in our numerical simulation research. This study validates the calculation of this model which cotains these two active molecules by using experimental data of ignition delay time and the speed of laminar flame propagation. In CH4-air mixing laminar combustion under fuel-lean condition(ф=0.5), flame speed will be increased, and singlet oxygen with 10% of mole fraction increases it by 80.34%, while ozone with 10% mole fraction increase it by 127.96%. It mainly because active atoms and groups(O, H, OH, CH3, CH2O, CH3O, etc) will be increased a lot after adding active molecules in the initial stage, and chain reaction be reacted greatly, inducing shortening of reaction time and accelerating of flame speed. Under fuel rich(ф=1.5), accelerating of flame speed will be weakened slightly, singlet oxygen with 10% in molecular oxygen increase it by 48.93%, while ozone with 10% increase it by 70.25%.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Durocher ◽  
Jiayi Wang ◽  
Gilles Bourque ◽  
Jeffrey M. Bergthorson

Abstract A comprehensive understanding of uncertainty sources in experimental measurements is required to develop robust thermochemical models for use in industrial applications. Due to the complexity of the combustion process in gas turbine engines, simpler flames are generally used to study fundamental combustion properties and measure concentrations of important species to validate and improve modelling. Stable, laminar flames have increasingly been used to study nitrogen oxide (NOx) formation in lean-to-rich compositions in low-to-high pressures to assess model predictions and improve accuracy to help develop future low-emissions systems. They allow for non-intrusive diagnostics to measure sub-ppm concentrations of pollutant molecules, as well as important precursors, and provide well-defined boundary conditions to directly compare experiments with simulations. The uncertainties of experimentally-measured boundary conditions and the inherent kinetic uncertainties in the nitrogen chemistry are propagated through one-dimensional stagnation flame simulations to quantify the relative importance of the two sources and estimate their impact on predictions. Measurements in lean, stoichiometric, and rich methane-air flames are used to investigate the production pathways active in those conditions. Various spectral expansions are used to develop surrogate models with different levels of accuracy to perform the uncertainty analysis for 15 important reactions in the nitrogen chemistry and the 6 boundary conditions (ϕ, Tin, uin, du/dzin, Tsurf, P) simultaneously. After estimating the individual parametric contributions, the uncertainty of the boundary conditions are shown to have a relatively small impact on the prediction of NOx compared to kinetic uncertainties in these laboratory experiments. These results show that properly calibrated laminar flame experiments can, not only provide validation targets for modelling, but also accurate indirect measurements that can later be used to infer individual kinetic rates to improve thermochemical models.


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