Extinction Limits of Laminar Diffusion Counterflow Flames of Various Gaseous Fuels including Syngas and Biogas

• Main Author: Kwan, Timothy
• Other Authors: Gulder, Omer L.
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Combustion; Strain Rate; Extinction; Counterflow; Soot; Flame; Hydrogen; Biofuels; Syngas; Biogas; Diffusion; 0548; 0538; 0765
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/42992

This work investigates the extinction limits of laminar diffusion counterflow flames for various gaseous (methane, syngas, biogas) fuels using a high flow rate counterflow burner designed and built for this work. Equal momenta of the fuel and oxidizer streams were not maintained to provide data to check the fidelity of the numerical schemes and their chemical mechanisms at "non-standard" conditions. Strain rate values at extinction were obtained as a function of fuel mole fraction. Preliminary work with the new burner found that the methane extinction limit results were consistent with results from literature. The results provide insight into the extinction limit conditions of the aforementioned fuels. The strain rate was found to increase with increasing fuel mole fraction. Extinction limit results indicated that fuels with the highest concentration of hydrogen have the greatest extinction limit, which is believed to be attributed to the high diffusivity and reactivity of hydrogen.