Overview of

Combustion

Ignition

Three things must be present at the same time
in order to produce fire:
Enough oxygen to provide combustion,
Enough heat to raise the material temperature to its
ignition temperature,
Fuel or combustible material which produces high
exothermic reaction to propagate heat to not-yet-
burnt material nearby
Activation energy
Flammability limit
Different flame types of Bunsen Burner depending on air
flow through the throat holes (holes on the side of the bunsen
burner). 1. air baffle closed (Safety flame) 2. air baffle half
open 3. air baffle nearly fully open 4. air baffle fully open
Premixed flame
A burning candle. Within
the bluer, hotter region
near the base of the
wick, hydrogen
separates from the wax
vapor, burns and forms
water vapor. Within
the brighter, yellower
part of the flame,
carbon soot oxidizes,
and forms carbon
dioxide.
Diffusion flame
Spectrum of flame colour
Flame
stabilisation
Stabilisation using swirling
Burning fossil fuels produces > 2/3 of our energy
production today and probably still will in a century.
Combustion is encountered in many practical systems
such as boilers, heaters, domestic and industrial
furnaces, thermal power plants, waste incinerators,
automotive and aeronautic engines, rocket engines
and even in refrigeration plants
In most applications, combustion occurs in
gaseous flows and is characterized by:
A strong and irreversible heat release. Heat is
released in very thin fronts (typical flame thicknesses
are usually < 0.5 mm) inducing strong temperature
gradients (temperature ratios between burnt and fresh
gases are of the order of 5 to 7).
Highly nonlinear reaction rates . These rates follow
Arrhenius laws:
where the Y
k
are the
mass fractions of the N species involved in the
reaction and T
a
is an activation temperature. T
a
is
generally large so that reaction rates are extremely
sensitive to temperature.

e
( )
N
k 1 k a
Y exp T / T
=
e= [
Combustion strongly modifies the flow field. In
simple one-dimensional flames, burnt gases are
accelerated because of thermal expansion but more
complex phenomena occur in turbulent flows:
depending on the situation, turbulence may be either
reduced or enhanced by flames .
Fuel oxidation is generally faster compared to flow
time scales but pollutant formation (nitric oxides,
soot) may be quite slower.
Various coupling mechanisms occur in combusting
flow fields:
Chemical reaction schemes deal with the fuel
consumption rate, the formation of combustion
products and pollutant species and should handle
ignition, flame stabilization and quenching (full
chemical schemes for usual hydrocarbon fuels
involve hundreds of species and thousands of
reactions).
Mass transfers of chemical species by molecular
diffusion, convection and turbulent transport also
occur.
The heat released by chemical reactions induces
strong conductive, convective or radiative heat
transfer inside the flow and with the surrounding
walls.
For two (liquid fuel) and three (solid fuel) phase
reacting systems, some other aspects must also be
involved: spray formation, vaporization, droplet
combustion.
Even for gaseous combustion, multiphase treatments
may be needed: for example, soot particles (which
can be formed in all flames) are carbon elements of
large size transported by the flow motions.
Some of these phenomena are illustrated in Fig. 1 in
the simple configuration, but very complex case, of a
candle.
Figure 1. A very delicate flame: the candle.
Straight arrows correspond to mass transfer
Broken arrows denote heat transfer.
The solid stearin fuel is first heated by heat transfer
induced by combustion. The liquid fuel reaches the
flame by capillarity along the wick and is vaporized.
Fuel oxidation occurs in thin blue layers (the color
corresponds to the spontaneous emission of the CH
radical).
Unburnt carbon particles are formed because the fuel
is in excess in the reaction zone. Soot, which is
produced by imperfect combustion, is welcomed in
the case of the candle because it is the source of the
yellow light emission.
Flow (entrainment of heavy cold fresh air and
evacuation of hot light burnt gases) is induced by
natural convection (a candle cannot burn in zero-
gravity environment).
To describe the various possible states observed in
reacting flows it is useful to introduce a classification
based on combustion regimes. Flames can be (see
Table 1):
a. premixed, non-premixed or partially premixed in
terms of how fuel and oxidiser are contacted
b. laminar or turbulent in terms of the shape of fluid
flow
c. stable or unstable in terms of maintaining the
combustion phenomena
Table 1. Some examples of practical applications in terms of
premixed/non-premixed flame and laminar/turbulent flow
field.

Criterion (a) depends on the way how to introduce the
reactants into the combustion zone and is one of the
main parameters controlling the flame regime.
Fuel and oxidizer may be mixed before the reaction
takes place (premixed flames, Fig. 2a) or enter the
reaction zone separately (non-premixed or diffusion
flames, Fig. 2b).








Figure 2. Classification of the combustion regime as a function
of the reactant introduction scheme.

Criterion (b) corresponds to the usual definition of
turbulent states in which large Re numbers lead to
unsteady flows. Most practical flames correspond to
turbulent flows: turbulence enhances combustion
intensity and allows the design of smaller burners.
Criterion (c) is more specific of reacting flows: in
some situations, a flame may exhibit strong unsteady
periodic motions (combustion instabilities) due to a
coupling between acoustics, hydrodynamics and heat
release.
Premixed flames
In premixed combustion, the reactants, fuel and
oxidizer, are assumed to be perfectly mixed before
entering the reaction zone (Fig. 2a).
Premixed flames propagate towards the fresh gases
by diffusion/reaction mechanisms: the heat released
by the reaction preheats the reactants by diffusion
until reaction starts (reaction rates increase
exponentially with temperature).
A one dimensional laminar premixed flame
propagates relatively to the fresh gases at the so-
called laminar flame speed s
l
depending on the
reactants, the fresh gases temperature and the
pressure (Fig. 3). For usual fuels, the laminar flame
speed is about 0.1 to 1 m/s.
When fresh gases are turbulent, the premixed flame
propagates faster. Its speed s
T
is called the turbulent
flame speed and is larger than the laminar flame
speed (s
T
>> s
l
).







Figure 3. Structure of a one-dimensional premixed laminar
flame.

For typical flames, the flame thickness, including
preheat zone, is about 0.1 to 1 mm whereas the
reaction zone itself is ten times thinner. In this figure,
the oxidizer is assumed to be in excess.
The correlation between s
T
, s
l
and the turbulence
intensity of the incoming flow u:

(1)
where o and n are two model parameters of the order
of unity. Unfortunately, s
T
is not a well defined
quantity (Gouldin,1996) and depends on various
parameters (chemistry characteristics, flow
geometry).
Eq. (1) is consistent with the experimental
observation that the turbulent flame speed increases
with the turbulence intensity.
Premixed flames offer high burning efficiency as the
reactants are already mixed before combustion.
The burnt gases temperature, which plays an
important role in pollutant formation, can be easily
controlled by the amount of fuel injected in the fresh
gases.
But these flames may be difficult to design because
reactants should be mixed in well defined proportions
(fuel/oxidizer mixtures burn only for a limited range
of fuel mass fraction).
A premixed flame may also develop as soon as the
reactants are mixed, leading to possible safety
problems.
Non-premixed flames
In non-premixed flames (also called diffusion
flames), reactants are introduced separately in the
reaction zone.
The prototype of this situation is the fuel jet
discharging in atmospheric air (Fig. 5). This
configuration is very simple to design and to build:
no pre-mixing is needed and it is safer: the flame
cannot propagate towards the fuel stream because it
contains no oxidizer and vice versa.
Nevertheless, diffusion flames are less efficient
because fuel and oxidizer must mix by molecular
diffusion before burning.
The maximum burnt gases temperature is given by the
temperature of fuel and oxidizer burning in
stoichiometric proportions and cannot be controlled
easily.
The structure of a one-dimensional non-premixed
laminar flame is sketched in Fig. 4.








Figure 4. Structure of a one-dimensional non-premixed
laminar flame. Here fuel and oxidizer streams are assumed to
have the same temperature.
Turbulence is also found to enhance combustion
processes in non-premixed flames as evidenced by
Hottel and Hawthorne (1949) who measured the
length of a diffusion flame burning a fuel jet
discharging in ambient air as a function of the fuel
flow rate (Fig. 5).
The flame length increases linearly with the fuel flow
rate as long as the flow remains laminar.











Figure 5. Non-premixed jet flame. A fuel jet discharges in the
ambient air. Top: flow configuration; Bottom: flame length
versus fuel jet velocity. (Hottel and Hawthorne, 1949.
When the jet becomes turbulent, the flame length
remains constant even when the flow rate increases,
showing an increase of the combustion intensity.
Very large flow rates will lead to lifted flames (the
flame is no more anchored to the jet exit) and then to
blow-off or flame quenching.
Partially premixed flames
The previously described premixed and non-
premixed flame regimes correspond to idealized
situations.
In practical applications, fuel and oxidizer cannot be
perfectly premixed.
In some situations, an imperfect premixing is
produced on purpose to reduce fuel consumption
(toward premixed) and to reduce pollutant
emissions (toward diffusion).
For example, in spark-ignited stratified charge
internal combustion engines, the fuel injection is
tuned to produce a quasi-stoichiometric mixture in the
vicinity of the spark to promote ignition but a lean
mixture in the rest of the cylinder.
In non-premixed flames, fuel and oxidizer must meet
to burn and ensure flame stabilization, leading to
partially premixed zones.
A small premixed flame develops and stabilizes a
diffusion flame as shown in Fig. 6. As a consequence,
partially premixed flames have now become topics of
growing interest






Figure 6. Structure of a triple flame. The flame is stabilized by
a premixed flame burning imperfectly premixed reactants (rich
and lean wings). A diffusion flame develops downstream.
Stable and unstable flames:
Thermodiffusive instabilities
Laminar premixed flames exhibit intrinsic
instabilities depending on the relative importance of
reactant molecular diffusion and heat diffusion. An
example of such phenomena, studied in details in
numerous papers (see, for example Williams, 1985) is
illustrated in Fig. 7.
Assume that the molecular diffusivity of reactants is
higher than the thermal diffusivity (i.e. the Lewis
number Le = k/( C
p
D), comparing thermal and
species diffusivities, < 1).

When the flame front is convex towards the fresh
gases, reactants diffuse towards burnt gases faster
than heat diffuse towards cold fresh gases.

These reactants are heated and then burn faster in
reduced convex region, increasing the local flame
speed s
l
(s
l
> s
l
o
) with time
On the other hand, for fronts convex towards the
burnt gases, reactants diffuse in a large zone thus
increasing convex region and the flame velocity is
decreased compared to s
l
o
(s
l
<

s
l
o
). This situation is
unstable: the flame front wrinkling increases.
When the species molecular diffusivity < the heat
diffusivity (Lewis number > 1), a similar analysis
shows that the flame is stable: the flame front
wrinkling decreases.









Figure 7. Sketch of thermo-diffusive instabilities (in laminar
premixed flames). For Le < 1, molecular diffusion (red
arrows) > heat diffusion (blue arrows) and the wrinkling of the
flame front is enhanced by differential flame speeds (left
figure).
For Le > 1 (right figure), a stable planar flame is obtained in
which molecular diffusion (blue arrows) < heat diffusion (red
arrows)
Stable and unstable flames:
Flame/acoustic interactions
Thermodiffusive instabilities (laminar premixed
flames) are rarely observed in industrial devices.
However, another type of instability may develop in
confined flames. These instabilities come from a
coupling between hydrodynamics, heat release and
acoustics.
Strong unsteady motions develop producing noise,
enhancing combustion intensity and leading sometimes
to the system destruction.
In some cases, such instabilities may be generated on
purpose to increase efficiency like in pulse
combustors, but generally undesired.
A simple example of such combustion instability is
provided in Fig. 8 for a premixed turbulent laboratory
burner (Poinsot et al., 1987). Without combustion
instabilities, a turbulent reacting jet stabilized by
recirculation zones is observed (Fig. 9 left).
Changing the equivalence ratio u (i.e. the amount of
fuel in the air stream) leads to a strong instability
(Fig. 9 right): large mushroom vortices are formed at
a frequency of 530 Hz, increasing the combustion
intensity by about 50 %.
The mechanism of such an instability may be
summarized as follows (Poinsot et al., 1987): a vortex
is generated at the jet inlet and convected
downstream. It induces an unsteady reaction rate,
producing an acoustic wave moving upstream to
generate a new vortex at the burner inlet.








Figure 8. Experimental turbulent premixed burner of Poinsot et
al. (1987).









Figure 9. Combustion instabilities in a turbulent premixed
flame. Schlieren views of the central jet through the quartz
window of Fig. 8: stable (left) and unstable (right) regimes.
The flow is going from the right to the left (Poinsot et al.,
1987).