Yuzuru Nada

Local flame structure in the well-stirred reactor regime

Direct numerical simulations of hydrogen/air turbulent premixed flame progagating in the three-dimensional turbulence are conducted to investigate local flame structures in the well-stirred reactor regime. A detailed kinetic mechanism including 12 reactive species and 27 elementary reactions is used to represent the H 2 /air reaction in turbulence. Although the flame condition is classified into the well-stirred reactor regime, the geometry of the regions with high heat release rate shows thin sheetlike structure. The fluctuation of the heat release rate along the flame surface is relatively high, and the maximum heat release rate reaches up to 1,3 times the corresponding laminar flame. The heat release rate tends to be high in the regions convex toward the burned side. The flame structure in the case of the well-stirred reactor regime shows a double-layered feature. One may conclude that reaction zone becomes thick in the well-stirred reactor regimes only from temperature, H, and OH distributions, while the heat release rate, mass fraction of O atoms, and reaction rates of O atoms and OH radicals are fluctuating significantly in that region in fact. Specifically, reaction rates of O atoms and OH radicals show characteristic behaviors in the burned side due to their chemical characteristics. In the preheat zone, mass fraction and reaction rate of HO 2 show quite thin and smooth distributions compared to other properties such as the heat release rate. The distribution of H 2 O 2 reaction rate reflects the double-layered feature of the well-stirred reactor regime very well. It is shown that the double-layered feature can be explained by discussing the balances of the elementary reactions in detail. As the flame front can be defined even in the well-stirred reactor regime, statistics of the local flame elements are also discussed.

Effect of turbulence characteristics on local flame structure of H2-air premixed flames

Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulent premixed flames are conducted to investigate effects of turbulence characteristics on the local flame structure. A detailed kinetic mechanism including 12 reactive species and 27 elementary reactions is used to represent the H2–air reaction in turbulence. Numerical conditions of DNS can be classified into a wrinkled-flamelets regime, a corrugated-flamelets regime and thin reaction zones near the boundary of Karlovitz number Ka = 1.0 of the turbulent-combustion diagram. For all cases, the distribution of heat-release rate shows a three-dimensionally connected sheet-like feature, even though the heat-release rate highly fluctuates along the flamefront. The heat-release rate tends to increase at the flamefronts that are convex towards the burnt side. For the turbulent premixed flames in the corrugated-flamelets regime, the handgrip structure is produced by the intrusion of the coherent fine-scale eddy into the flame and the heat-release rate in this structure i...

Effect of Wall Configuration on Atomization of Rapeseed Oil Diesel Spray Impinging on the Wall

Fuel-air mixing is important process in diesel combustion. It has been well known that wall configuration of the piston affects spray atomization. Biomass fuel, that is viable alternative fuel for fossil one, needs great help of mixing to atomization because the fuel has high viscosity and high distillation temperature. This study investigates spray atomization characteristics of rapeseed oil (RO) when it impinges on the piston wall. Optical observation of RO spray was carried out using shadowgraph photography technique. The optical images and image analysis show that wall impingement effectively promotes RO spray atomization. Spray atomization is more sensitive to wall configuration for RO than diesel fuel. The wall that has flat floor at the bottom can improve atomization. It is necessary for RO spray to promote spray penetration followed by wall-impingement because long spray path offers wide spray boundary region to form droplets.

Macro- and Micro-scale Observation on Dynamic Behavior of Diesel Spray Affected by Ambient Density and Temperature

High boosting technology is commonly applied to diesel engines in recent years. Amid this trend, the study of spray behavior at ignition delay period still plays an important role in diesel combustion. This study focuses on the effect of ambient condition on diesel spray. The study investigates both macroscale and micro-scale dynamic behaviors of diesel spray affected by ambient density and temperature at early stage of injection. A study via dual nano-spark shadowgraph method and rapid compression machine has been carried out to simulate real diesel engine combustion and to further understand the dynamics behavior of droplet evaporation and size distribution at early stage of mixture formation in the chamber. The micro-scale images captured reveal a shape variation of branch-like structures formed at the spray boundary. The evaporation of droplets is also captured clearly in macro- and micro scale photographs under the condition of high temperature ambient. Detailed observation and analysis of the images show that high ambient density affects the spray atomization at the upper stream of diesel spray at the early stage of injection. High temperature and high density air entrainment into spray promotes droplets evaporation, in particular, at the upper stream of spray. At high density ambience, spray evaporation and mixture formation are first promoted at the middle stream of spray region that is about 20mm from the injector outlet.

Effect of Gas-Jet Ignition Technique on the Extension of CNG Lean Combustion Limit

Lean combustion of CNG has the advantage of high thermal efficiency and fewer pollutants than other fossil fuels. However, problems such as ignitability, cyclic variation and high THC emission were common at combustion leaner than equivalence ratio φ=0.7. The application of gas-jet ignition method to lean combustion was able to address such problems. This paper introduces the concept of gas-jet ignition method, which ensures ignitability at lean bulk equivalence ratio. Moreover, this method is applied to a real CNG engine. Results of engine performance experiment shows that two-stage injection method combined with gas-jet ignition has successfully widen the operating range of a CNG engine from low to high load at corresponding φ=0.17 to 1.1.

Effects of Flow Field on Combustion Characteristics of Confined Jet Nonpremixed Flames

Confined flames are widely used in the industrial field. The flame characteristics can be strongly dominated by the combination of a burner and furnace geometries, which were not paid much attention before. In the present study, flow fields in confined flames are discussed in terms of the flame characteristics. The flow characteristics of confined flames have been investigated for propane nonpremixed flames in cylindrical furnaces. The effects of the inner diameter of the cylindrical furnace D1 , the turbulence at the flame boundary, and the global equivalence ratio φ are examined in terms of the relation between the emission of NOx and the flow fields. The emission index of NOx, EINOx, decreases roughly with these parameters. The decrease in EINOx is thought to be related to the dilution of mixtures by the burned gas and the flame stretch. The dilution is attributable to vortices formed at the bottom of the furnace, and the flame stretch is attributable to the air velocity difference ΔUa created by two air nozzles. In the present study, it was found that the increases in D1 , ΔUa, and φ enlarge and strengthen recirculation vortices to dilute the flame.Copyright

Analysis of Diesel Spray Evaporation Process in High Density and High Temperature Atmosphere

Diesel engines, in recent years, come lo apply high pressure charging and high EGR to improve engine performance. In this situation, it is important to study on diesel spray behavior and mixture formation under those kinds of condition. This study investigates diesel spray development and micro-scale characteristics of droplets evaporation including atomization under high density and high temperature atmosphere. Experiment was carried out by shadowgraph photography method. Our system has a nano-spark light source to illuminate spray injected into spray chamber. The image analysis can reveal droplets size-distribution and droplets dynamic behavior at spray boundary. Results indicate that, at early stage of injection, high atmospheric density accompanied with high temperature greatly affects droplets atomization and evaporation at spray boundary. High density atmosphere produces small-size droplets. Evaporation of large-size droplets is improved with high density and high temperature atmosphere.

Distribution of Two-Stage Direct Injection CNG-Air Mixture near Lean Limit Using CFD

Previous work shows that gas-jet ignition with two-stage injection technique is effective to extend lean combustible ranges of CNG engines. In this report, the robustness of the gas-jet ignition with two-stage injection method was investigated purposely to improve the performance of a lean burn direct injection CNG engine. The experiment was conducted using an engine at speed of 900 rpm, fuel-injection-pressure of 3MPa, equivalence ratio at 0.8, and ignition timing at top dead center. The effect of first injection timing on the test engine performance and exhaust emission was analyzed. First injection timings near the gas-jet ignition produced unstable combustion with occurrence of misfires except at a timing which produced distinctively good combustion with low HC and CO emissions. Computational fluid dynamics was used to provide hindsight of the fuel-air mixture distribution that might be the cause of misfires occurrence at certain injection timings.

Flow-Geometry and Reynolds-Number Effects on Flame-Turbulence Interactions

Three-dimensional direct numerical simulation (DNS) with a detailed kinetic mechanism has been conducted for statistically-planar turbulent flame and turbulent V-flame of hydrogen–air mixture to clarify the effects of mean flow velocity on principal strain rates at flame front and on flame geometry. Reynolds numbers based on Taylor micro scale and turbulent intensity are selected to 60.8 and 97.1, and mean flow velocities for V-flame are 10 and 20 times laminar burning velocity. From results of DNS, eigenvalues and eigenvectors of strain tensor are evaluated to investigate characteristics of strain field near flame and flame normal alignments with the principal axes of strain in detail. It has been revealed that Reynolds number affects both magnitude of strain rates and alignment between flame normal and principal axis of strain, and that the magnitude of mean flow velocity affects flame normal alignments in turbulent V-flame.Copyright

The Effect of Distance Between Fuel and Oxidizer Nozzles on NOx Emission From High Temperature Air Combustion

This study describes NOx emission characteristics of a high temperature air combustion furnace operating with parallel jet burner system. In the parallel jet burner system, fuel nozzles are separated with a distance from an oxidizer nozzle. Objectives of this study are to clarify the effect of the distance between the fuel nozzle and the oxidizer nozzle on NOx emission. The emission index of NOx (EINOx) decreases with the increase in the distance. This is due to the dilution through entrainment of burned gas. A scaling concept is proposed to assess the dilution effect on the NOx emission. Scaling parameters employed here are the global residence time of fuel and the flame temperature evaluated on a modified flamelet model in which the dilution effect is included. The overall EINOx production rate is scaled with the flame temperature. This scaling indicates the importance of the distance between the nozzles for NOx emission.© 2011 ASME