Combustion (ME643A)

Assignment-1
(Due: Feb 3, 2017 by 6 p.m. at NL302, Mechanical Engineering)
Late submissions will not be graded.
1. For carbon monoxide (CO) combustion with air (79% N2, 21% O2 by vol.) at reactant
temperature (Treac) = 298 K, pressure (P) = 1 atm and equivalence ratio () = 1, calculate the
i) constant pressure and ii) constant volume adiabatic flame temperature assuming
complete combustion using the following two methods:

A. Constant specific heats for the product species at 1000 K. (30 Marks)

B. Temperature dependent specific heat for the products. You can use curve fits given in
Table A.13 of the textbook (using MATLAB or any other software). Submit a copy of your
code (or script). (30 Marks)

a) Explain the difference in the predicted adiabatic flame temperatures from methods A &
B. (5 Marks)

b) Explain the difference in the predicted constant pressure and constant volume adiabatic
flame temperatures. (5 Marks)

c) What is the final pressure for the constant volume process? (10 Marks)

2. Calculate the constant pressure and constant volume adiabatic flame temperature for
problem 1A with subject to the following conditions:
a) Pressure (P) is raised to 10 atm (Treac = 298 K, = 1). (20 Marks)
b) Reactant temperature (Treac) is raised to 600 K (P = 1 atm, = 1). (20 Marks)
c) Equivalence ratio () is reduced to 0.5 (Treac = 298 K, P = 1 atm). (20 Marks)

3. Estimate the HHV and LHV of liquid ethanol. (20 Marks)

4. Evaluate the heat of reaction: C2H6 + 3.5 O2 2CO2 + 3H2O. (20 Marks)

5. Consider the equilibrium reaction: CO2 CO + 0.5 O2. At 10 atm and 3000K, the equilibrium
mole fractions of a particular mixture of CO2, CO, and O2 are 0.6783, 0.2144, and 0.1072,
respectively. Determine the equilibrium constant Kp for this reaction. (30 Marks)

6. Water-gas shift reaction (WGSR) is known to provide the equilibrium condition of

the product for rich combustion. The reaction is shown as:

CO + H2O CO2 + H2,

and often applied to control CO mole fraction in the product. Assuming that Kp =
0.193 for T=2200 K and P=1 atm, compute the mole fraction of CO and H2 for C2H6
air combustion with = 1.2. Compare your results with the full equilibrium result
from GASEQ. (20 Marks)

How the WGSR and full equilibrium solutions will compare with each other for a
stoichiometric mixture of C2H6 air combustion? (20 Marks)