Jenq-Renn Chen

Effect of Chemically Inert Particles on Thermodynamic Characteristics and Detonation of a Combustible Gas

An approximate model of chemical equilibrium in heterogeneous mixtures of a combustible gas with chemically inert solid or liquid particles has been suggested. It includes explicit algebraic formulas for the calculation of the molar mass of the gas, internal energy, and heat capacities of gas-particles mixture, and ordinary differential equations for the description of isentropic compression and adiabatic index of the system. The model can be also useful for the rough estimations of thermodynamic parameters of gaseous mixtures with particles of soot. As an example of a possible application of the suggested model of chemical equilibrium, parameters of stationary one-dimensional detonation wave in gas-particles mixtures are calculated. The algorithm of estimation of detonation cell size in such heterogeneous mixtures is presented. Detonation wave parameters and cell size in the stoichiometric hydrogen-oxygen mixture with particles of W, Al2O3, and SiO2 have been calculated. The results of the calculations of detonation parameters and cell sizes are used for analysis of the method of multi-front detonation wave suppression by particles injection before the leading shock front of the wave. The minimal total mass of the particles and characteristic size of the cloud, which are necessary for detonation suppression, have been calculated. It is shown that such suppression is more effective if the particles have high heat capacity, low melting point, and high heat of melting. Among the particles under consideration, the particles of Al2O3 are the best for the detonation wave suppression.

Numerical analysis on the hot spot in reactive chemical storage

Abstract In an exothermic reactive chemical storage tank, a thermal explosion can occur when the heat generation within the storage tank is greater than the heat removal from the storage tank. In a solid system, the existence of an inflection point in the temperature versus time curve is often used as a criterion for thermal explosion. In this study the applicability of this criterion to fluid storage is examined by investigating the hot spot in the system. Transient natural convection of an exothermically reactive fluid in a vertical, cylindrical storage tank with isothermal walls is investigated numerically. The axisymmetric 2-D Navier–Stokes equations governing the flow fields are reduced by introducing the stream function–vorticity formulation and solved by the alternating-direction-implicit (ADI) technique. The reactive heat sources are represented by a zeroth-order rate expression with an Arrhenius-type rate constant. It is found that the hot spot is no longer located in the center of the tank due to the buoyancy effect. In a particular range of Rayleigh number and Frank-Kamenetskii number, the hot spot is found to move periodically. A stable steady regime, stable oscillatory regime and thermal explosion regime can be specified based on the dependence of the critical Frank-Kamenetskii number on the Rayleigh number. In the stable oscillatory regime multiple inflections in temperature versus time are found. Therefore, the existing criterion, which defines thermal explosion by the appearance of an inflection in the temperature versus time curve, is no longer applicable in reactive fluid systems. The results of nonconvective systems do, however, provide a preliminary and conservative estimate for thermal explosion of a reactive storage tank.