Judul Effect of Hydrogen Ratio on Turbulent Flame Structure of Oxyfuel Syngas

at High Pressure Up To 1.0 MPa

Penulis Jinhua Wang, Shilong Guo, Weijie Zhang, Meng Zhang, Zuohua Huang
Reviewer Hasan Ashari (171910101041)
Tanggal 15 Mei 2020
Mata Kuliah Teknologi Pembakaran

Abstrak Jurnal yang berjudul “Effect of Hydrogen Ratio on Turbulent Flame

Structure of Oxyfuel Syngas at High Pressure Up To 1.0 MPa” ini
bertujuan untuk membandingkan nyala api antara api premixed turbulen
CO/H2/CO2/O2,CO/H2/CO2/udara dalam model syngas oxyfuel dengan
campuran CH4/udara pada tekanan tinggi hingga 1,0 MPa. Rasio hidrogen
dalam syngas ditetapkan sebesar 35%, 50% dan 65% dalam fraksi
volumetrik.
Obyek Penelitian Obyek dari penelitian ini adalah profil nyala api dari campuran
CO/H2/CO2/O2,CO/H2/CO2/udara dan campuran CH4/udara.
Tujuan Penelitian Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mendapatkan karakteristik nyala
api dan membandingkannya setelah diberi perlakuan yang sama.
Prosedur Eksperimen dilakukan dengan menggunakan fasilitas pembakaran
Eksperimen bertekanan tinggi di Institute of Fluid Science, Universitas Tohoku. Empat
pelat berlubang digunakan untuk menghasilkan berbagai intensitas
turbulensi dan skala. Struktur nyala api sesaat diukur dengan teknik OH-
PLIF dan kemudian parameter statistik struktur nyala api dan kecepatan
pembakaran turbulen diturunkan untuk menginterpretasikan interaksi
multi-turbulensi api.
 Campuran CO/H2/CO2/O2, CO/H2/CO2/udara dan CH4/udara diberbagai
intensitas turbulensi diuji. Rasio hidrogen dalam syngas XH2/
(XH2+XCO) ditetapkan sebesar 35%, 50% dan 65% dalam fraksi
volumetrik. Komponen campuran ditunjukkan oleh tabel di bawah.

Hasil Eksperimen Setelah proses eksperimen diperoleh data sebagai berikut.

Kesimpulan Dari penelitian diatas dapat disimpulkan bahwa:

1. Struktur depan api dari syngas berkerut dan cembung serta
mengerucut, campuran yang tidak terbakar lebih tajam dan lebih
dalam dibandingkan dengan api dari pembakaran CH4. Tekanan
 memiliki efek dominan pada kerutan di depan api selain komposisi
campuran pada tekanan tinggi 1,0 MPa.
2. Kepadatan permukaan api dari syngas lebih besar dari CH4. S dari
api syngas hampir tidak tergantung pada rasio tekanan dan
hidrogen terutama ketika rasio hidrogen lebih dari 50% yang
merupakan fitur signifikan dari pembakaran syngas. Kepadatan
permukaan api yang lebih besar untuk model api syngas terutama
berasal dari struktur yang lebih halus dengan kerutan yang lebih
kecil yang merupakan hasil dari ketidakstabilan intrinsik nyala api
yang lebih intensif.
3. ST/SL dari syngas lebih besar dari CH4 dan sedikit meningkat
dengan meningkatnya tekanan. ST/SL meningkat dengan rasio
hidrogen dan tetap konstan ketika rasio hidrogen lebih dari 50%.
 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 4 4 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 1 1 1 8 5 e1 1 1 9 3

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Effect of hydrogen ratio on turbulent flame structure

of oxyfuel syngas at high pressure up to 1.0 MPa

Jinhua Wang*, Shilong Guo, Weijie Zhang, Meng Zhang, Zuohua Huang
State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China

article info abstract

Article history: The CO/H2/CO2/O2, CO/H2/CO2/air turbulent premixed flames as the model of syngas
Received 11 December 2018 oxyfuel and syngas/air combustion were studied experimentally and compared to that of
Received in revised form CH4/air mixtures at high pressures up to 1.0 MPa. Hydrogen ratio in syngas was set to be
21 February 2019 35%, 50% and 65% in volumetric fraction. Four perforated plates are used to generate wide
Accepted 25 February 2019 range of turbulence intensity and scales. The instantaneous flame structure was measured
Available online 21 March 2019 with OH-PLIF technique and then statistic flame structure parameters and turbulent
burning velocity were derived to interpret the multi scale turbulence-flame interaction.
Keywords: Results show that the flame structure of syngas is wrinkled and convex cusps to the un-
Turbulent premixed flames burned mixtures are sharper and deeper comparing to that of CH4 flames. Pressure has a
Pressure effect dominating effect on flame wrinkling other than mixtures composition at high pressure of
Flame structure 1.0 MPa. The flame surface density, S of syngas is larger than that of CH4. The S of syngas
Syngas flames is almost independent on pressure and hydrogen ratio especially when hydrogen
High pressure ratio is over 50% which is a significant feature of syngas combustion. Larger flame surface
density for syngas flames mainly comes from the finer structure with smaller wrinkles
which is the result of more intensive flame intrinsic instability. The ST/SL of syngas is larger
than CH4 and it slightly increases with the pressure rise. The ST/SL of syngas oxyfuel is
similar to that of syngas/air flames in the present study. The ST/SL increases with the in-
crease of hydrogen ratio and keeps almost constant when hydrogen ratio is over 50%.
© 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

resources are gasified to derive the syngas with the main

Introduction
Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technology
offers a great potential on energy safety and clean power
generation including zero CO2 emission because of its supe-
rior advantages of fuel diversity and the suitability for Carbon
Capture and Storage (CCS) [1,2]. Oxyfuel combustion which
burns the fuel with pure oxygen and recycled flue gas rather
than air can achieve high concentration of CO2 in the emis-
sions and is more suitable for post combustion CCS [3]. For
IGCC power generation system, the coal or other fuel
composition of CO and H2. Oxyfuel combustion of syngas is
much different from the traditional hydrocarbons such as
natural gas/air combustion in modern premixed-type gas
turbine. The first distinction of the hydrogen enriched syngas
from hydrocarbons is mainly from its large mass, heat diffu-
sivity and high reactivity which resulting in the high laminar
burning velocity, very thin flame thickness and the low Lewis
number. All these characteristics induce combustion insta-
bility and also a more complicated turbulence-flame interac-
tion. The hydrogen ratio in syngas has a significant variability

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jinhuawang@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (J. Wang).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.02.209
0360-3199/© 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
11186 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 4 4 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 1 1 1 8 5 e1 1 1 9 3
from 25% to 76% according to the specific feedstock and
gasification process [4], which makes the turbulent combus-
tion for syngas even more complicated. Our previous research
showed that both laminar and turbulent burning velocities of
syngas are quite dependent on hydrogen ratio [5,6]. Secondly,
the mixtures are CO/H2/CO2/O2 for syngas oxyfuel combus-
tion. The high concentration of CO2 possesses attractive fea-
tures such as the enhanced radiation for heat transfer. Our
previous study showed that large ratio of CO2 dilution has an
significant effect on enhancing flame radiation and promoting
flame wrinkling comparing to that of H2O and N2 dilution at
high pressures [7,8].
Meanwhile, turbulent premixed flame at high pressure is
essential for both the application on modern premixed
combustor and scientific understanding of turbulence-flame
interaction at high pressure. It received increasing concern
in the past decades; however, it is still far from well under-
stood. Flame structure reveals the interaction between tur-
bulence and flame, and it can also be used for the turbulent
combustion modeling and model assessment. Driscoll sug-
gested that a robust combustion model should be able to
predict the correct turbulent burning velocity as well as the
statistical flame structure, such as flame surface density,
flame brush thickness, local curvature distribution [9]. Thanks
to the development of combustion laser diagnostic technique
in the past decades, turbulent burning velocity and flamelet
structure have been measured and recently a number of re-
view papers summarized the progress [9e12]. While, few
studies were reported on the syngas oxyfuel turbulent flames,
especially for high hydrogen ratio at high pressure conditions
mainly due to the experimental difficulty. Syngas/air and/or
syngas oxyfuel combustion at pressures up to 1.0 MPa were
tested by the authors [6,8]. However, turbulence characteris-
tics and the detailed flame structure statistics were not
investigated, and the effect of high hydrogen ratio over 50% on
turbulence-flame interaction is not clear.
The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of
high hydrogen ratio and pressure (up to 1.0 MPa) on flame
structure of syngas oxyfuel turbulent premixed flames. The
CO/H2/CO2/O2, CO/H2/CO2/air mixtures as the model of syngas
oxyfuel and syngas/air combustion were experimentally
studied and compared to that of CH4/air turbulent premixed
flames. Hydrogen ratios in syngas are set as 35%, 50% and 65%.
The paper is organized as following. Experimental setup and
flame front structure measurement technique were
described. Turbulence generating plates and turbulence
characteristics were discussed in details. Flame images were
given and statistic parameters were derived. The effects of
high pressure and hydrogen ratio on flame-turbulence inter-
action are discussed from flame structure statistics. Last
section concludes the paper.
Experimental setup and procedure
Experiments were conducted using the high pressure com-
bustion facility at the Institute of Fluid Science, Tohoku Uni-
versity which has been described elsewhere [13,14] and a brief
summary is provided here to facilitate the discussion. A
stainless steel nozzle-type burner with an outlet diameter of
20 mm was used as shown in Fig. 1. The turbulence was
generated by a perforated plate installed 40 mm upstream of
the outlet. Four perforated plates with different diameters (2.1,
3.5, 4.0 and 3.5 mm) and block ratios (40%, 55%, 60% and 65%)
are used to generate wide range of turbulence scales as given
in Fig. 1 and Table 1. Turbulence measurement at high pres-
sure was conducted using a constant-temperature hot-wire
anemometer at 30 kHz (Dantec, Streamline 90 N) at burner
exit. The hot wire sensor was placed at two angles, i.e. 0
and
45
, with the incoming flow for validating the isotropic
assumption. The turbulence parameters are calculated based
on Taylor hypothesis and the isotropic assumption.
CO/H2/CO2/O2, CO/H2/CO2/air and CH4/air mixtures at
various turbulence intensities were tested. Hydrogen ratios in
syngas XH2/(XH2þXCO) are set as 35%, 50% and 65% in volu-
metric fraction. The mixture components are given in Table 2.
The unstretched laminar burning velocity, SL was estimated
by using the Premix code [15] and Chemkin-II database [16]
with GRI 3.0 mechanism [17] for CH4/air and USC-Mech 2.0
mechanism [18] for syngas flames. The properties of the
mixtures were summarized in Table 2 dL is the laminar flame
thickness calculated by dL ¼ aD/SL, where aD is the thermal
diffusivity of the mixtures. Effective Lewis number, Leeff was
calculated by the methods of Bechtold et al. [19] and Yuan
et al. [20].
Turbulent premixed Bunsen flames of various mixtures
were stabilized at the burner outlet in the high-pressure
chamber. High pressure fresh air was supplied to the cham-
ber to keep the high pressure constant and to prevent the
chamber from filling with burned gases. The fuel/oxidizer
premixed mixtures are supplied to the burner. The flame
structure was identified by the boundary of the instanta-
neous OH profile with OH-PLIF technique at 10 Hz. An Nd-
YAG laser (Spectra Physics, GCR-250-10) and a dye laser
with a frequency doubler (Spectron, SL4000) were used. A
high resolution ICCD camera (Andor, DH574-18F) with
1024  1024 pixels was used and the finest pixel resolution
was 0.054 mm/pixel at the measurement plane. The laser
sheet thickness is about 0.5 mm at the flame position ac-
cording to the Rayleigh criterion. The laser sheet thickness is
of the same order of laminar flame thickness as shown in
Table 3, therefore the detection on instantaneous flame
structure is reasonable. The ICCD resolution is 198 mm which
was measured using a Resolution Target (1951 USAF). The
relative error of flame structure detection is 19% when we
consider the smallest scale as the inner cutoff scale accord-
ing to the theory of Wang and Clemens [21,22]. A description
of the OH-PLIF apparatus and the selected wavelength are
stated elsewhere [14,23].
The flame front was tracked from the OH-PLIF images and
the image processing method is illustrated elsewhere [24]. The
OH-PLIF images were filtered and then binarized obtaining a
continuous single pixel flame front. Flame brush as well as
progress variable contours, <c> were obtained by super-
imposing the instantaneous flame contours and the binary
images. Flame surface density (S) was obtained by the boxing
method [25,26]. To determine S, it is assumed that the average
flame surface area per unit volume equals the average flame
perimeter per unit area in the laser sheet. At each location of
interest, an interrogation box of size 11  11 pixel was chosen
 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 4 4 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 1 1 1 8 5 e1 1 1 9 3 11187

Fig. 1 e Turbulent premixed Bunsen burner: (a) cross-section schematic and top view of the Bunsen burner; (b) four
turbulence generating perforated plates.

to cover the entire image pixels one by one. The length of the
boundary was calculated in interrogation box by counting the
number of pixels in the box. 500 images were used and more
than 1500 points of each OH-PLIF image were tracked which
was proved sufficient to fit the continuous flame front for the
subsequent calculation. The final average flame length of 500
images divided by the area of the interrogation box is the
flame surface density at the center of the box. Local curvature
and its probability density function (PDF) distribution was
calculated. The range for the calculation of curvature is from
50 to 50 mm1 and the interval for PDF calculation is
0.5 mm1.
Results and discussion
Turbulence characteristics and effect of high pressure
The turbulence field distribution is essential for the discussion
of turbulent premixed flames for the Bunsen burner method

Table 1 e Summary of four turbulence generating Table 2 e Summary of mixture components mole
perforated plates. fractions.
Plate Diameter Block ratio Coefficient Coefficient Mixtures Components f H2% XCO2
NO. (mm) (%) a b
COH35 CO/H2/CO2/O2 1.0 0.35 0.550
No. 1 2.1 60 0.0342 0.0 COH50 CO/H2/CO2/O2 1.0 0.5 0.560
No. 2 3.5 65 0.0662 0.0 COH65 CO/H2/CO2/O2 1.0 0.65 0.570
No. 3 4.0 55 0.0904 0.0 CAH35 CO/H2/CO2/air 0.7 0.65 0.089
No. 4 3.5 40 0.1513 0.0 CH4 CH4/air 1.0 e e
11188 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 4 4 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 1 1 1 8 5 e1 1 1 9 3

Table 3 e Summary of properties of mixture and flames

(P: MPa, SL: cm/s, dL: mm).
Mixtures H2% P SL dL Leeff
COH35_0.5 35 0.5 19.10 0.020 0.854
CAH35_0.5 35 0.5 18.44 0.026 0.867
CH4_0.5 0 0.5 18.78 0.025 1.040
COH35_1.0 35 1.0 13.60 0.014 0.854
CAH35_1.0 35 1.0 13.49 0.018 0.867
CH4_1.0 0 1.0 13.35 0.018 1.040
COH50_0.5 50 0.5 19.09 0.022 0.776
COH65_0.5 65 0.5 19.10 0.022 0.758
COH50_1.0 50 1.0 13.37 0.014 0.776

[9,11]. Turbulence was measured at the center and 10 mm

above the burner outlet. Isotropic turbulence field assumption
needs to be checked. Turbulence was measured at 10 mm
above the burner outlet and various radial locations. Plots of
local mean velocity, Ulocal and local turbulence intensity, u0 for
mean flow velocity, Uave ¼ 3.0 m/s and 5.0 m/s of plate No. 3
was presented in Fig. 2. It can be seen that the turbulence field
is quite isotropic on the center part of the burner except for
the boundary near the outer diameter of the burner. It would
be due to the shear flow of the main flow with the ambient air.
The dependence of turbulence intensity on Uave for four
perforated plates can be seen in our previous work [27]. Very
good linear relationship between u0 and Uave was observed for
all the four plates at wide range of Uave. It also showed that
pressure increase from 0.5 MPa to 1.0 MPa slightly decreases
the turbulence intensity. The turbulence intensity is mainly
depended on the perforated size. The integral scale, l0 and
Kolmogorov scale, lk with turbulence intensity, u0 calculated
form the root mean square of the three fluctuations for
different plates and pressures are given in Fig. 3 l0 and lk are
viewed as the mean of the large scale and smallest scale in
turbulent flow, which is upper and lower limit for the inertial
energy cascade respectively. l0 generally represents the size of
large vortex which contains energy to stretch flame while lk
represents the scale below which the turbulent energy is
dissipated due to the viscosity. The results show that l0 de-
pends on the plate diameter and pressure has a very weak
effect on l0. lk is considered as the smallest scale below which
the turbulence is dissipated by viscous effect. lk decreases
significantly with the turbulence intensity. Pressure has a
significant effect for decreasing the lk. This mainly results
Fig. 3 e Dependence of the turbulence intensity upon Uave.
from the decreasing of gas viscous at higher pressure, which is
identical with the turbulence energy spectra analysis [28].
Effects of pressure and hydrogen ratio on flame front
wrinkling statistics
The Borghi's diagram of turbulent premixed flames revised by
Peters [29] is shown in Fig. 4. It shows that most of the flames
in this study are located in the corrugated flamelet regime;
thus the flamelet concept was applied in this work. The OH-
PLIF images of the turbulent premixed flames at u0 /SL ¼ 2.5
are given in Fig. 5. Two model syngas flames are plotted as
well as CH4/air for the comparison at both 0.5 MPa and
1.0 MPa. Moreover, COH flames at different hydrogen ratio
were also shown in the figure. A preliminary inspection of the
figure reveals that all flames in the figure possess highly
corrugated flame front structure superimposed by very small
wrinkles. Firstly, the leading point with convex cusps to un-
burned mixture are sharper and deeper for syngas flames
compared to that of CH4 for both pressures. We can also notice

Fig. 2 e Plots of Ulocal and turbulence intensity u0 for Fig. 4 e Borghi's diagram revised by Peters [29] of turbulent
Uave ¼ 3.0 m/s and 5.0 m/s of plate No. 3. premixed flames in this study.
 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 4 4 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 1 1 1 8 5 e1 1 1 9 3 11189

Fig. 5 e OH-PLIF images of turbulent premixed flames at u0 /SL ¼ 2.5. The mixture is corresponding to Table 3.

that finer flame front structure was obtained at 1.0 MPa,
resulting in larger flame surface area indicating that pressure
can promote combustion process. Also, it is the consequence
of the thinner laminar flame thickness resulting from high
pressure, which leads to a more unstable flame. The flame
front structure of syngas and CH4 flames are similar at 1.0 MPa
comparing those at 0.5 MPa. Secondly, when increasing
hydrogen ratio from 35% to 50%, the convex cusps is sharper
with thinner fiber structure and deep penetrate into the un-
burned mixture, which means hydrogen has an obvious pro-
motion on the flame-turbulence interaction. When further
increasing the hydrogen ratio, there is no apparent influence
on flame structure.
Fig. 6 gives the typical instantaneous flame structure which
is the instant observation and is essential random for turbu-
lent combustion. The phenomenon description on single
instantaneous image can give a direct flame front observation
but not reveal the comprehensive information of turbulence-
flame interaction. The statistical analysis of the instanta-
neous flame front should be applied to resolve the phenom-
enon quantitatively due to the random fluctuated nature of
the turbulence. Therefore, in the subsequent section, statistic
flame structure and turbulent burning velocity will be pre-
sented to interpret the above experimental observation and
turbulence-flame interaction.
The profiles of local flame surface density S, which is
defined to be the flamelet surface area per unit volume, is
shown in Fig. 6 under the same scale. The profile reveals the
local flame surface intensity which representing the heat
release as well as the flame brush thickness. For 2D PLIF
measurement, the S is calculated as flamelet length per unit
area. It is readily seen that the S values are high and the
11190 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 4 4 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 1 1 1 8 5 e1 1 1 9 3
Fig. 6 e Flame surface density profiles at u0 /SL ¼ 2.5.
distribution is narrow in the upstream region. The S is pro-
gressively decreasing and the distribution extends to a wider
range with downstream location. Moreover, the distribution is
intensive in the center of the flame brush and becoming
dispersive towards to both burned/unburned sides. This in-
dicates that the flame has larger possibility in the center. First
looking at S at 0.5 MPa in different cases, the syngas flames are
more compact and the S of syngas is larger than that of CH4.
Furthermore, S of COH35 is higher than that of CAH35. Larger
S for two model syngas flames mainly comes from the finer
structure with smaller wrinkles which is the result of more
intensive flame intrinsic instability indicated by Leeff as shown
in Table 3. This implies that the combustion of syngas is more
intensive than CH4 flame, and the strategy of syngas burning
with large CO2 fraction can further promote the turbulent
combustion. When increasing the pressure to 1.0 MPa, S dis-
tribution shows a similar behavior while the flame brush is
significantly condensed, indicating the pressure has less ef-
fect in promoting the combustion for syngas but has an
evident promoting effect for CH4 flames. This suggest that the
syngas has an inferior requirement in combustion pressure
than CH4 in combustion chamber when designing the engine.
The third line of Fig. 6 shows the COH flame with different
hydrogen ratio. It can be observed that the high hydrogen can
further increase the combustion intensity for COH.
The variation of flame surface density S with mean prog-
ress variable <c> is given in Fig. 7. First looking at flames at
0.5 MPa, the S of syngas is larger than that of CH4 and
CHO35_0.5 has a larger S than CHA35_0.5 even though they
possess the same hydrogen ratio. This means that oxyfuel
combustion is more effective to enhance turbulent combus-
tion. When focusing on the effect of hydrogen ratio on oxyfuel
flames, it can be seen that the S has an obvious increasing
trend when XH2 is increased from 35% to 50%. However, the S
is pretty much the same when XH2 further increases from 50%
to 65%, which means that enhancement of hydrogen on tur-
bulent combustion is slow down at very high hydrogen ratio.
The effect is also different for syngas and CH4 flames as
pressure increase from 0.5 MPa to 1.0 MPa. For CH4, the S in-
creases significantly from 0.5 MPa to 1.0 MPa which is mainly
due to the finer flame front structure at high pressure, while
the effect of pressure is weaker for syngas mixtures. For
COH50 mixtures, the S even slightly decrease with the pres-
sure increase. This means that the effect of pressure on
enhancing combustion is more evident for CH4 flame than
syngas flames.
The turbulent mean progress variable <c> is a measuring
of the progress in turbulent flame, from totally unburned gas
<c> ¼ 0 and completely burned gas <c> ¼ 1. Plots of the flame
surface density always had a variation following <c> (1<c>)
[30], so that they could be indicated by the maximum value,
Smax, which is defined as the maximum flame surface density
versus progress variable contour [30]. The relationship be-
tween Smax and flame brush thickness, dT is shown in Fig. 8.
The dT is the flame brush thickness which defined as the
thickness between <c  0.1 to <c  0.9 at the burner centerline.
Under the pressure of 0.5 MPa, it is obviously showed that the
Smax of syngas is higher than that of CH4. With the increase of
hydrogen ratio from 35% to 50%, S is increased, however, the S
at 65% hydrogen ratio is similar to that of 50%, which means
that further increasing hydrogen ratio larger than 50%, the S
remains almost a constant. While the behavior is different for
syngas and CH4 flames when pressure increases from 0.5 MPa
to 1.0 MPa. For CH4, the S increases significantly from 0.5 MPa
to 1.0 MPa, while, for syngas mixtures, the effect of pressure is
weaker. For COH50 mixtures, the S even slightly decrease with
the increase of pressure. This means that the pressure effect is
Fig. 7 e Flame surface density against mean progress
variable at u0 /SL ¼ 2.5.
 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 4 4 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 1 1 1 8 5 e1 1 1 9 3
Fig. 8 e Relationship between flame surface density,
flame brush thickness, dT.
weaker for syngas mixtures at higher hydrogen ratio. The
previous study by Kobayashi [8] also indicated that the inde-
pendent of S on pressure is one of the significant features of
syngas combustion. The present study extended this conclu-
sion that the S of syngas flames is independent on pressure
and hydrogen ratio when hydrogen ratio is over 50%.
To further illustrate the flame characteristics, the non-
dimensional parameter, SmaxdT which is the production of
maximum flame surface density and integral scale versus u0 /
SL is given in Fig. 9. The consumption speed of turbulent pre-
mixed flames ST/SL can be calculated from
~ max dT I0
ST SL ¼ S
where dT is the centerline flame brush thickness and I0 is the
stretch factor. The variation of SmaxdT with ST/SL can be used to
analysis the turbulent consumption speed. When SmaxdT is
plotted against u0 /SL, the non-dimensional flame surface area
increasing linearly with u0 /SL. Candel and Choi derived that
SmaxdT is proportional to u0 /SL [30,31]. We can see a tighter
linear relation for CH4 flames at 0.5 MPa and the SmaxdT is
smaller than the rest flames. While both syngas/CH4 flames
Fig. 9 e Flame surface density multiplied by the integral
scale versus turbulence intensity.
11191
1.0 MPa and the syngas flames at 0.5 MPa has a similar linear
relation and SmaxdT is larger. This indicates that the combus-
tion of CH4 flames is less intensive and the CH4 flame is more
passive to the turbulent perturbation in 0.5 MPa, while CH4 in
1.0 MPa shows a similar trend with syngas flame at 0.5 MPa,
which is consistent with the discussion on flame surface
density in the previous section.
The PDF distribution of curvature is given in Fig. 10. All
flames possess an asymmetric shape which has a larger pos-
sibility to form the positive curvature convex to unburned gas.
The asymmetry is much obvious for syngas flames. It reveals
that the peak of PDF distribution of curvature is lower for two
syngas model flames comparing to that of CH4. This indicates
that syngas flames have a wider profile of curvature and finer
flame front structure which corresponds to the small curva-
and ture as shown in Fig. 5. The high diffusivity and reactivity of
hydrogen makes the flame more unstable to gain finer struc-
tures. With the increase of pressure, the PDF distribution of
curvature becomes flatter and broadened with higher proba-
bility of large curvature structure for syngas oxyfuel and/or
syngas/air flames. This tendency is weaker compared to the
previous research at lower pressure from 0.1 to 0.3 MPa [32].
This may be attributed to the enhanced hydrodynamic
instability at high pressure. The thermal diffusivity is
inversely proportional to the pressure. With the increase of
pressure, the decrease in thermal diffusivity makes the flame
thickness small, meaning that the diffusive-thermal effect
becomes weak and hydrodynamic instability becomes rela-
tively strong [33].
Effect of hydrogen ratio and pressure on turbulent burning
(1)
velocity
Turbulent burning velocity, ST is considered as one of the most
important parameters of turbulent premixed combustion. It
was derived using a conventional angle method with
<c> ¼ 0.1, which is analogous to measure the laminar flame
speed SL with a Bunsen burner. The variation of ST/SL with
turbulence intensity u0 /SL is given in Fig. 11. Under all cases the
ST/SL increases with turbulence intensity. It can be seen that
Fig. 10 e The PDF distribution of local flame front curvature
at u0 /SL ¼ 2.5.
11192 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 4 4 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 1 1 1 8 5 e1 1 1 9 3
Fig. 11 e The relationship between ST/SL and u0 /SL for
various mixtures and pressures. Data of COH35_0.5,
CAH35_0.5, CH4_0.5, COH35_1.0, CAH35_1.0 and CH4_1.0
are from previous experiments [8,35].
CH4_0.5 presents the lowest ST/SL while the highest ST/SL is
COH65_0.5. The rest data locates between the above two
conditions. At 0.5 MPa, ST/SL of two model syngas with 35%
hydrogen ratio is larger than that of CH4, and ST/SL of syngas
oxyfuel flame shows slightly higher value than that of syngas/
air flames. The larger ST/SL of those two model syngas mainly
results from more active turbulence-flame interaction leading
to more enhanced flame area, which can be verified by the
instantaneous OH-PLIF observation as shown in Fig. 5. This
would be due to the lower Leeff of syngas which leads to
wrinkled flame front structure of syngas flames with larger
flame surface as well as higher ST/SL. For syngas oxyfuel
flames, the ST/SL significantly increases when hydrogen ratio
is increased from 35% to 50% and hydrogen ratio has no
apparent influence when it further goes to 65%. Similar
behavior is observed at the pressure of 1.0 MPa. For all the
flames tested, when pressure rises from 0.5 MPa to 1.0 MPa,
the ST/SL is very insensitive and almost keeps the same level.
The pressure raise shows a less effect for increasing ST
comparing to effects of hydrogen ratio within the value of
50%. Our previous research on turbulent burning velocity of
CH4/air mixtures from 0.1 to 1.0 MPa also showed that the
pressure effect on turbulent burning velocity is very obvious
for pressure rising from 0.1 to 0.5 MPa, and then turbulent
burning velocity remains almost constant from 0.5 to 1.0 MPa
[34]. This can be explained by the mechanism of scale rela-
tionship between laminar flame thickness and Kolmogorov
scale. Both of laminar flame thickness and Kolmogorov scale
decrease with increase of pressure. It indicates that there is a
limitation for turbulence to wrinkle the flame front when the
laminar flame thickness is close to the Kolmogorov scale.
Conclusions
The CO/H2/CO2/O2, CO/H2/CO2/air mixtures as the model of
syngas oxyfuel and syngas/air combustion were studied
experimentally and compared to that of CH4/air turbulent
premixed flames at high pressures up to 1.0 MPa. Hydrogen
ratios in syngas were set as 35%, 50% and 65%. Four perforated
plates were used to generate wide range of turbulence scales.
The instantaneous flame front structure was measured with
OH-PLIF technique and then statistic parameters and turbulent
burning velocity were derived to interpret the turbulence-flame
interaction. The main results are summarized as follows:
1. Flame front structure of syngas is wrinkled and convex
cusps to unburned mixtures is sharper and deeper
compare to that of CH4 flames. Pressure has a dominating
effect on flame front wrinkling other than mixtures
composition at high pressure of 1.0 MPa.
2. The flame surface density of syngas is larger than CH4. The
S of syngas flames is almost independent on pressure and
hydrogen ratio especially when hydrogen ratio is over 50%
which is a significant feature of syngas combustion. Larger
flame surface density for model syngas flames mainly
comes from the finer structure with smaller wrinkles
which is the result of more intensive flame intrinsic
instability.
3. The ST/SL of syngas is larger than CH4 and slightly increases
with the pressure rise. The ST/SL of syngas oxyfuel is
similar to that of syngas/air flames in the range of the
present study. The ST/SL increases with hydrogen ratio and
keeps constantly when hydrogen ratio is over 50%.
Acknowledgements
This study is supported by National Natural Science Founda-
tion of China (No. 51776164, 91441203, 91841302). The experi-
ment was conducted on Prof. Hideaki Kobayashi Lab. at
Institute of Fluid Science, Tohoku University under the sup-
port of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for a
Postdoctoral Fellowship grant.
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