Flameless Combustion of H2-Enriched Flame: a CFD Aided Experimental Investigation

C. Galletti1, P. Gheri2, G. Gigliucci2, A. Parente1, M. Schiavetti2, S. Soricetti1, L. Tognotti1

1. Dipartimento di Ingegneria Chimica, Chimica Industriale e Scienze dei Materiali Universit di Pisa - ITALY 2. Enel Ricerca, Pisa - ITALY 1. Introduction The environmental and energetic scenario has promoted an increasing attention to those fuels known as clean, because they do not increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and/or may help reducing urban pollution. Among them, hydrogen is regarded as a promising energy carrier for the future, so efforts have being made to characterize its entire cycle from production to utilization. Hydrogen shows some specific properties, such as high reactivity that make conventional burners unsuited because of the large amount of thermal nitrogen oxides produced. Therefore research has focused on alternative low NOx technologies such as catalytic combustion, airstaging, pre-mixing, exhaust gas recirculation. Among these techniques particular attention is paid to MILD (Moderate and Intense Oxygen Dilution) or flameless combustion, which couples high combustion efficiencies with very low pollutant emissions [1, 2]. Such combustion technology requires temperatures larger than the fuel self-ignition temperature and a strong recirculation of exhaust gases in the reaction zone in order to dilute reactants concentration. Combustion takes place without any visible flame (flameless combustion) and it is no longer restricted to the flame front region but extended to the entire combustion chamber. The system approaches perfectly stirred reactor conditions and it is characterized by a more uniform temperature field than in traditional combustion systems. By avoiding temperature peaks, NOx emissions are limited to values far below 100 ppm. Critical points of this technology are the realization of thermofluodynamic conditions which stabilize the flameless combustion process and the design of regenerative heat exchangers which use the combustion products for preheating. In the present paper an experimental investigation of mild combustion technologies for H2 enriched fuels, has been carried out on two different burners. Both burners are design to be fed with natural gas, and this work was aimed at assessing the burners behavior when amounts of hydrogen are added to the fuel. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to plan experiments, understand measured data as well as investigate different burners configurations. Obligatory, the first step was the CFD model assessment. 2. Methodology: CFD aided experiments The use of CFD is motivated by the complexity of the investigated burners. As flameless combustion is profoundly influenced by fluid dynamics (it is the recirculation of exhaust gases into the reaction zone which allows the flame dilution) CFD appears maybe the more suited and powerful tool in understanding such technology. Burners for flameless combustion usually show complex geometries which make simplified schemes difficult and inappropriate. For instance the position and configuration of fuel and air injection nozzles are fundamental in determining the recirculation of exhaust gas into reaction zone, therefore they have to be modeled faithfully.
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Advances in mesh generators may help their good representation. However, there are other fundamental issues to be considered when modeling flameless combustion operations. An appropriate turbulence model is fundamental in determining the extent and strength of recirculation. The combustion model is also crucial: flameless combustion occurs with turbulent mixing timescales comparable to chemical timescales. It has been proved that mixed is burnt approaches are unsuited [3, 4], thus models considering turbulence-chemistry interactions are necessary. Conversely, radiation and spectral models seem of less importance with respect to other flames because of the good homogeneity of chemical species in the reaction zone [5]. Consequently, since its high complexity, it is mandatory to assess the CFD model through accurate comparison with measurements. A scheme of the methodological approach used in the present work is given in Figure 1. CFD aided planning the experimental campaign, and understanding the burners behavior. Furthermore, once the CFD model is assessed, simulations might be used to predict the burner performance under different conditions.
planning exp. campaign

CFD
predictions

measurements understanding model validation

experiments
measurements

Figure 1 scheme of the methodology. 3. Experimental apparatus The two burners investigated operate in flameless combustion mode and are placed at Enel Ricerca Laboratories in Livorno. 3.1. FLOX burner The first burner is a FLOX burner with a nominal power of 13 kW. The burner is cylindrical with a radius of 0.045 m and a length of 0.60 m. It operates with an internal recirculation of exhaust gases, which is promoted by a 0.41 m long flame tube equipped with three windows and positioned inside the burner (see Figure 2). The combustion chamber is delimited by a radiant tube closed at the upper end. The burner can operate by radiating heat through the radiant tube. Indeed the burner is well suited for all applications where the combustion environment has to be kept separated from the media to be heated. Outside the radiant tube and coaxially to it, an Inconel shield and a water heat exchanger have been placed in the test rig in order to replicate the heat losses towards the surrounding of real burner operations. More details about the burner can be found in Donatini et al. [6], however a simplified scheme of the combustion chamber is depicted in Figure 2 to facilitate description of numerical approach and discussion of results. The burner is self-recuperative, which means that the inlet air is preheated with exhaust gases by means of a finned-surface heat exchanger. The burner is fed with methane, however methane-hydrogen mixtures up to 5% by wt. H2 contents were tested. O2, CO, NO, CO2 concentration are measured in the exhaust stream, whereas series of thermocouples are mounted on the radiant tube surface.

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windows

radiant tube inlet

flame tube

fuel inlet air inlet

Figure 2 - simplified scheme of the FLOX combustion chamber.. 3.2. SOLO burner The second burner is SOLO and can supply a Stirling cycle, which is used for microcogeneration thus for producing both thermal and electrical power. The burner is designed to be fed with natural gas, however the effect of adding H2 up to 10% by wt. to the fuel was investigated. The combustion chamber (closed at the upper end) is cylindrical and 0.31 m long, and it is enclosed by a external case with a diameter ranging from 0.021 to 0.0235 mm. A flame tube with a diameter of 0.087 m is placed internally. Air is injected through 6 nozzles inclined of 25 with respect to the horizontal, whereas the fuel is injected through 6 nozzles inclined of 65, their spatial arrangement in shown in Figure 3. The mixture reacts within the flame tube; exhaust gases reverse direction outer the flame tube and cross a finned heat exchanger. Inside such heat exchanger there is Helium which realizes a Stirling cycle for the production of electrical power. Exhaust gases are entrained from the injected mixture, thus they partly recirculate into the reaction zone. Exhaust gases leaving the combustion chamber pass through an heat exchanger for air preheating. Temperatures of working fluids (Helium, exhaust gases leaving the combustion chamber), flow rates, concentrations of O2, CO, NO, CO2, thermal and electrical power were measured.
air inlet
heat exchanger

flame tube

fuel inlet

Figure 3 scheme of the SOLO combustion chamber with details about the injection section. 4. Numerical modeling 4.1. FLOX burner The CFD software CFX 5.7 by Ansys Inc. was used to carry out the simulations. The three windows (see Figure 2), required the modeling of a 120 angular section of the burner. It was decided to model a fluid domain representing the real combustion chamber, and two solid domains, one for the flame tube and one for the radiant tube which confines the burner. It is worth noting that the modeling of solid boundaries is rather unusual but it was done in order to take into account the heat exchanges, mainly due to radiation effects between the reacting gas and the solid boundaries. In addition, as mentioned previously, in the experimental setup of ENEL laboratories, thermocouples are mounted on the outer surface of
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the radiant tube, so its modeling makes possible the comparison between experimental and predicted data. This is necessary to assess the CFD model. The mesh contained about 500,000 cells. The k-_ turbulence model was used to determine Reynolds stresses. A combined Eddy Dissipation Model/Finite Rate Chemistry (EDM/FRC) model was used as combustion model. Such a model takes into account the turbulence-chemistry interaction by calculating an Arrhenius rate (based on the chemical mechanism) and a turbulent mixing rate (derived from Magnussen-Hjertager equation) and choosing the slower rate to explicit the reaction sources in the chemical species transport equation A four step kinetic mechanism was used for methane and hydrogen oxidation [7]. The thermal and prompt mechanisms of NO formation were both modelled with one-step Arrhenius kinetics integrated over PDF functions for temperature in order to consider turbulence effects. The P1 method based on spherical harmonics was used to solve the radiative transfer equation. The Gray model was used to evaluate the spectral properties of the medium. Two subroutines were written on purposes in order to take into account heat exchanges phenomena. The first subroutines was used to determine the inlet air temperature which was calculated from the exhaust gases temperature by using pre-heater efficiency correlation available from the burner supplier. The second subroutine was used to set the heat flux boundary condition on the radiant tube. Such subroutine takes into account convection and radiation between coaxial cylinders and uses an iterative procedure to solve the heat flux. 4.2. SOLO burner Due to the presence of 6 injection nozzles for both air and fuel, it was decided to model an angular sector of 60. The computational domain is shown in Figure 4a: it was divided into sub domains to facilitate mesh generation and boundary conditions. An hexahedral mesh was used everywhere except for the injection region, where a tetrahedral mesh was refined in order to reproduce accurately injection nozzles (Figure 4b). Totally, about 250,000 elements were used. Since the unfeasibility of modeling the finned heat exchanger placed inside the combustion chamber, this was modeled through an heat sink. A subroutine was written on purposes in order to calculate heat losses, by performing an energy budget on gases crossing the finned heat exchanger. A subroutine was also necessary to determine the air inlet temperature from the exhaust gas temperature, by considering the pre-heater efficiency. Turbulence, combustion and radiation models were the same as those described for the FLOX burner.

outlet heat exchanger top main air inlet fuel inlet (a) (b) Figure 4 SOLO burner: (a) assembly of the computational domain and (b) mesh details in the inlet region.

axis

flame tube

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5. Results 5.1. FLOX burner Figure 5 shows comparison between predicted and measured temperatures along the radiant tube for a 9.13 kW run. The agreement is very good with errors below 25 K. It is worth reporting that such agreement was achieved by means of an accurate reproduction of the burner geometrical details. At the beginning, the presence of the three windows was ignored, thus predicted data differed from measured ones by more than 100 K. Therefore it was necessary to improve the CFD model to match the experimental findings. Once the model was assessed, CFD simulations could be used to investigate other configurations. For instance it was found that larger recirculation of exhaust gas in the reaction zone are needed with increasing H2 concentration in the fuel to operate in flameless regime. In addition a modification of the injection air nozzles was suggested in order to improve flameless combustion. It was also found that flameless operations produced very low emissions of NOx, of the order of very few ppm.

Figure 5 Radiant tube temperatures: comparison between CFD and measured data. FLOX burner. Load: 9.13 kW. (x = axial coordinate from the injection). 5.2. SOLO burner Figure 6 compares measured and predicted NO emissions. It can be noticed that the agreement is satisfactory for the larger loads, but considerable discrepancies are evident for the 10 kW run. It is worth mentioning that the burner is designed to work for 25-35 kW loads and most of the assumptions behind the subroutines refer to those burner loads. Probably they are unsuited for low burner loads, therefore they should be improved.

Figure 6 NO emissions: comparison between CFD and measured data. SOLO burner.

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Although these are preliminary results, they have helped understanding some experimental results. For instance, a decrease of NOx emissions with increasing H2 content was observed. CFD showed that H2 shortened the flame (see temperature distributions in the combustion chamber given in Figure 7), resulting in a reduction of gases residence time at temperature promoting NO thermal formation. Specifically it was found that the extent of the region with temperature above 1600C decreases from 1.5% of the entire volume to 0.6% when increasing the H2 content from 0 to 8.6% by wt. It can be observed that maximum temperatures in the burner are relatively high for flameless combustion operations. The degrees of exhaust gas recirculation were calculated to be of about 100-120%. Such values are rather low to get a fully developed flameless regime. This is also confirmed by NOx emissions (Figure 6) which are significant.

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 7 temperature distribution for different H2 contents in the fuel:(a) 0%; (b) 6% by wt.; (c)8.6% by wt.. SOLO burner. Power: 30kW. 6. Conclusions A methodology based on both CFD and experiments has been used to characterize burners fed with H2-enriched flames. Some results and findings have been shown for two burners working on operating in flameless combustion regime. Since the importance of fluid dynamics in determining the flameless regime, CFD appears as a powerful tool. Indeed the complex burner geometry makes simplified schemes unsuited. The burner operation is frequently complicated by the presence of internal heat exchangers.. etc., and this requires the formulation of appropriate heat transfer models. As a result, the CFD model has to be normally coupled with subroutines written on purposes. In addition attention must be paid to physical models, such as turbulence and combustion models and their interactions. Therefore, even if CFD is an attractive tool, the model assessment through comparison with measurements is mandatory. To that purpose, the CFD model should be able to predict measured data, as well as the experimental campaign should be planned accurately. Once the CFD model is assessed, it may help understanding experimental findings, predicting other configurations and investigating burners design improvements. 7. References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Wnning, J.A., Wnning, J.G.: Prog. Energy Combust. Sci.; 23: 81(1997). Cavaliere A., de Joannon, M.!: Prog. Energy Combust. Sci.; 30: 329 (2004). Coelho, P.J., Peters, N.: Combust. Flame; 124: 503 (2001). Christo, F.C., Dally, B.B.: Combust. Flame; 142: 117 (2005). Galletti, C., Parente, A., Tognotti. L.: ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Computational Combustion, Lisbon, Portugal (2005). Donatini, F., Gheri, P., Paulozza, A., Schiavetti, M., Tognotti, L.; 59 Congresso dellAssociazione Termotecnica Italiana, Genova, Italy (2004). Jones W.P., Lindstedt R.P.: Combust. Flame; 73: 233(1988).
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