Title: Investigation of the temperature and species distributions in co-flow methane–oxygen laminar diffusion flames

Authors: Karnam Bhadraiah; Vasudevan Raghavan

Addresses: Thermodynamics and Combustion Engineering Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600 036, Tamil Nadu, India. ' Thermodynamics and Combustion Engineering Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600 036, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: Investigation of the structure of co-flow methane–oxygen diffusion flame is presented. A numerical model with a 43-steps chemical kinetics mechanism and an optically thin radiation sub-model is employed in simulations. Through simple co-flow diffusion flame experimental arrangement, visible flame extents have been measured. The methane oxygen flames have four distinct visible regions; a dark inner zone, a reddish zone, a highly luminous zone and a blue or bluish-white zone. The variation of the extents of these zones with increasing oxygen flow rate is discussed. The effect of oxygen flow rate on the species and temperature distribution is studied in detail.

Keywords: co-flow diffusion flames; oxy-fuel combustion; flame structure; confined flame; multi-step chemistry; flame extents; methane oxygen; chemical kinetics; oxygen flow rate.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2011.042846

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2011 Vol.11 No.6, pp.363 - 372

Published online: 06 Oct 2011 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article