Possibility of simulating Co-flowing Non-premixed Flame

[Alan Kong]

Hi all,

I would like to know if there is a possibility of simulating a co flowing non-premixed flame in Cantera. 

Cheers

Alan

[Thomas Fiala]

Alan,

No, Cantera cannot do that. That's a 2D problem, and so far only (some) 1D equations are implemented.

I recommend using FLUENT, because it supports mixture-averaged diffusion (but don't try to enable the 'multicomponent diffusion' option, that didn't work for me, at least some time ago).

Thomas

[Alan Kong]

Hi Thomas,

I read about the Fluent and Cantera Interface. Sadly, I do not have Fluent license and I think the most plausible choice right now is to OpenFoam which is a freeware.

I am more interested with the reaction path analysis at different parts of the co-flowing flame. I know some parts of the flame are stoich, some lean and some fuel rich, depend on where u are looking at.

Thus, I would like to know if its enough to just analysis these in the 0D and 1D sense such that I can get a completely picture of the flame structure in the co-flow flame. In turns, I can generate a reduced kinetic mechanism model which I can then try to put into an actual co flow flame code which I can simulate with Fluent or any other higher dimension flow solver.

Currently I am doing just simulation of 1D counterflow flames (which is the closest to co flow non premixed flame) and using that as a basis for generating all my reaction path analysis and sensitivity analysis and I dont know if this was enough for my reduction.

Cheers

Alan

[Thomas Fiala]

Alan,

The problem with openFoam is that it assumes unitiy Lewis and Schmidt numbers. In some situations, that might be not so important, but at least if you burn a hydrogen-rich fuel you'll get a severe error. The implementation of diffusion in openFoam would be quite a task. I know that there were people working on it some time ago and there might be a version which supports non-unity Lewis and Schmidt numbers, so you might be lucky.

In diffusion flames, there is no single reaction path. Instead, diffusion controls mostly what happens.
You're right, 1D counterflow flames are the closest you can get using Cantera. However, I assume that you should be able to get most of the information you're interested in from these simulations. Besides making the simulation more complicated, 2D jet flames are also harder to analyze.

Thomas