Burning velocity measurement of lean methane-air flames in a new nanosecond DBD microplasma burner platform

This paper presents the initial characterization of a new burner design to study the effect of non-thermal plasma discharge on combustion characteristics at atmospheric pressure. The burner allows stabilizing an inverted cone flame in a mixture flowing through a perforated plate designed as a microplasma reactor. The design principle of the microplasma reactor is based on the dielectric barrier discharge scheme which helps to generate a stable nonthermal plasma discharge driven by nanosecond high-voltage pulses in the burner holes. The consumed power and pulse energy have been calculated from simultaneously measurements of current and voltage of the electrical pulses. Time-resolved measurements of direct emission spectra for nitrogen second positive system N2(C-B) have been done to determine the rotational and vibrational temperatures of the plasma discharge. By fitting the spectra with SPECAIR simulation data, it was found that the rotational and vibrational temperatures are 480 K and 3700 K, respectively, for the discharge in methane-air mixture with an equivalence ratio of 0.5 at atmospheric pressure. The influence of a high-voltage (5 kV) pulsed nanosecond discharge on the laminar burning velocity of methane-air flame has been investigated over a range of equivalence ratios (0.55–0.75). The laminar burning velocity was calculated by the conical flame area method which has been validated by other published data. CH* chemiluminescence image analysis has been applied to accurately determine the flame area. The results show an increase of the burning velocity of about 100% in very lean (Φ= 0.55) flames as a result of the plasma discharge effect

Optimization of combustion in micro combined heat and power (mCHP) system with the biomass-Stirling engine using SiO2 and Al2O3 nanofluids

In this paper, a typical mCHP system was integrated by gamma type Stirling engine to meet electric, heating and hot water demands. The combustion test results, which is a key technology for small and micro scale mCHP systems have been presented and the combustion parameters for the Gamma type Stirling engine power system are discussed. Finally, the effect of SiO2 and Al2O3 nanoparticles, dispersed in Polyalkylene glycol (PAG) of mCHP system on the viscosity and thermal conductivity, were investigated. Also, the effect of sawdust biomass fuel on mCHP system emissions (such as CO, NOx, HC) have investigated. The test results confirm the fact that Stirling engines that are driven by the temperature of biomass gases are able to achieve a valuable output power. Also, Analysis of pollutants showed that by increasing of sawdust mass flow rate from 0 to 0.14 (g/s), CO emissions increased 164 Vol%, also HC and NOx emissions increased 295-24 ppm respectively. Finally, the comparison between Al2O3/PAG and SiO2/PAG nano-lubricant demonstrate that Al2O3/PAG have better performance, therefore, the findings suggest Al2O3/PAG with a volume concentration of 0.010% as an optimum and best performance nano-lubricant for mCHP system. On the basis of the experimental results, we conclude that using the SiO2 and Al2O3 nanofluids in mCHP system can be introduced as new way to improve the performance of mCHP

Turbulent Combustion Modeling using Flamelet Generated Manifolds for Gas Turbine applications in OpenFOAM

The continuous interest in reducing pollutions and developing both an efficient and clean combustion system require large attention in the design requirements, especially when related to industrial gas turbine application. Although in recent years the advancements in modelling have increased dramatically, combustion still needs a huge computational effort. The Flamelet-Generated Manifolds (FGM) method is considered a suitable solution with an accuracy that can be comparable with detailed chemistry simulations results. The full combustion system can be described by few controlling variables while the chemical details are stored in a database (manifold) as function of controlling variables. Transport equations are solved for the Navier-Stokes system and the controlling variables. The detailed chemistry code Chem1D is used to create the manifolds. Turbulence can be modeled using a PDF approach for the subgrid modeling of the chemistry terms. The OpenFOAM open source CFD package is used as CFD tool for the simulations. The aim of this work is to demonstrate the usage of FGM with OpenFOAM and figure out the status of the implementation. To achieve this goal, the work employs as test case a confined lean jet flame is used. For the case presented, an extensive experimental data set exist, including PIV and Raman data. Results are further compared with traditional methods, while FGM method might be easily extended to other scenarios