ALBERT

Description: The effects of steam injection on combustion products and thermodynamic properties of diesel fuel, soybean oil-based biodiesel (NBD), and waste cooking oil biodiesel (WCOB) are examined in this study by considering the chemical equilibrium. The model gives equilibrium mole fractions, specific heat of the exhaust mixtures of 10 combustion products, and adiabatic flame temperatures. The results show that the mole fractions of carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2) decrease with the steam injection ratios. Nitric oxide (NO) mole fractions decrease with the steam injections ratios for lean mixtures. The specific heat of combustion products increases with the steam injection ratios. The equilibrium combustion products obtained can be used to calculate the nonequilibrium values of NO in the exhaust gases using some existing correlations of NO kinetics.

Description: This research article discloses how a uniquely structured fuel additive can easily be mixed with commercially available diesel fuel to produce an extremely stable nanoemulsion fuel. Even when using an ultralow dose (125 ppm), the additive still creates a large and catalytically active surface area using billions of nanosized water droplets (4 nanometers). No metallic or organometallic compounds were used. When used in heavy duty diesel engines, treated fuel significantly improves vehicle fuel economy. Extensive verification testing was carried out using multiple fleets of heavy duty diesel trucks operating for up to two years under “real-world” driving conditions. Testing used 538 heavy duty trucks and 15 different vehicle fleets. Test vehicles used 475,000 litres of treated fuel and covered a total of 14 million kilometres. Fleet testing was supervised by one of the premier European testing agencies (TNO Quality Services BV). Raw fuel economy data was collected and analyzed by an independent consulting agency andd showed a combined average weighted fuel savings of 9.7%. Diesel engine CO2 emissions are one of the many contributory causes of global warming. Unfortunately, new engine fuel economy technologies can take 10 years to have a 50% impact (typically 5% per year, as older vehicles are slowly replaced with new models). However, using the additive would immediately improve the combustion properties of fuel being used in these vehicles with the potential to reach up to 90% of the entire diesel vehicle population within about 60 days.

Description: This work presents Large Eddy Simulations of the unconfined CORIA Rouen Spray Burner, fed with liquid n-heptane and air. Turbulent combustion modeling is based on the Filtered TAbulated Chemistry model for LES (F-TACLES) formalism, designed to capture the propagation speed of turbulent stratified flames. Initially dedicated to gaseous combustion, the filtered flamelet model is challenged for the first time in a turbulent spray flame configuration. Two meshes are employed. The finest grid, where both flame thickness and wrinkling are resolved, aims to challenge the chemistry tabulation procedure. At the opposite the coarse mesh does not allow full resolution of the flame thickness and exhibits significant unresolved contributions of subgrid scale flame wrinkling. Both LES solutions are extensively compared against experimental data. For both nonreacting and reacting conditions, the flow and spray aerodynamical properties are well captured by the two simulations. More interesting, the LES predicts accurately the flame lift-off height for both fine and coarse grid conditions. It confirms that the modeling methodology is able to capture the filtered turbulent flame propagation speed in a two-phase flow environment and within grid conditions representative of practical applications. Differences, observed for the droplet temperature, seem related to the evaporation model assumptions.

Description: This study investigates the continuous transition from flame-spreading to stabilized combustion near the blow-off limit in opposed forced flow by using expanding solid fuel duct that makes distribution of oxidizer velocity in the axial direction. The stabilized combustion is a diffusion flame that appears in the Axial-Injection End-Burning Hybrid Rocket. The boundary between flame-spreading and stabilized combustion has not been investigated in detail. Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) rectangular ducts were used as a fuel, and gaseous oxygen was used as an oxidizer. All firing tests were conducted at atmospheric pressure. The diffusion flame traveled in the opposed-flow field where the oxidizer velocity increases continuously in the upstream direction. The combustion mode changed when oxidizer velocity at the flame tip exceeded a certain value. The oxidizer velocity used in this experiment ranges from 0.6 to 32.8 m/s. Experimental results show that a threshold oxidizer velocity of the transition can be determined. In this study, the threshold velocity was 26.4 m/s.

Description: Many experiments have been done by authors to study the influence of the natural ventilation through openings on fire behaviour in compartments. It has been revealed that fire will be influenced by the size of existing openings which can be an open window, an open door, or both of them. Concerning the last case, the literature does not give any information about the impact of the arrangement of these openings on the behaviour of fire. The present paper aims then to carry out a comparative study of the disposition of the window compared to the door, on the behaviour of fire in a compartment. To achieve that objective, fire experiments were conducted in a reduced scale room of ​​dimensions 1.20 m × 1.20 m × 1.02 m, which can be modulated into two configurations. The first one named “PFC configuration” is the case where the open door and the open window are in nonopposite walls. The second one named “PFO configuration” is the case where these both openings are in opposite walls. After having performed several fire tests in both configurations using the same amount of diesel fuel as fire source, results revealed that the fuel burns faster in the PFC configuration compared to that in the PFO configuration. This is due to a global mass loss rate of 2.93 × 10−4kg.s−1 against 2.62 × 10−4kg.s−1, respectively. Beyond a difference of 20°C observed on the maximal temperature of burned gases located at ceiling, results also revealed the production of ghosting flames in the PFO configuration.

Description: This study observed the influence of magnetic field orientation on the premixed combustion of vegetable oil. The results show that the magnetic field increased the laminar burning velocity because the spin of electron became more energetic and changes the spin of hydrogen proton from para to ortho. The increase of flame speed became larger on vegetable oil with stronger electric poles. The attraction magnetic field gives the strongest effect against the increase of flame speed and makes flame stability limit wider toward lean equivalence ratio. This is because O2 with the paramagnetic nature is pumped more crossing flame from the south pole (S) to north pole (N) whereas the heat energy carried by H2O from the reaction product with the diamagnetic nature is pumped more crossing flame in the N pole to the S pole. This made the combustion close to Lewis number equal to unity, whereas in the repulsion magnetic poles, S-S, more O2 is pumped into the flame while more heat is pumped out of the flame, and thus, combustion in the flame is leaner and reactions are not optimal. Conversely, at N-N poles, more heat carried by H2O was pumped into the flame while more O2 was pumped out of the flame. As a result, combustion in the flame is richer and the reaction is also not optimal. As a consequence, the velocity of the laminar flame at the repelling poles is lower than that of attracting poles.

Description: This study deals with the development of controlled-ignition technology for high-performance compression ignition alcohol engines. Among the alcohol fuels, we focus on ethanol as it is a promising candidate of alternative fuels replacing petroleum. The objective of this study is to reveal the physical and chemical phenomena in the mixture formation process up to autoignition of an ethanol spray. In our previous numerical study, we showed the mixture formation process for gas oil and ethanol sprays in the form of spatial excess air ratio and temperature distributions inside a spray and their temporal histories from fuel injection. The results showed a good agreement with those of theoretical analysis based on the momentum theory of spray penetration. Calculation was also confirmed as reasonable by comparing to the experimental results. Through the series of our experimental and numerical studies, the reason for poor autoignition quality of an ethanol spray was revealed, that is, difficulty in simultaneous attainments of autoignition-suitable concentration and temperature in the spray mixture formation due to its fuel and thermal properties of smaller stoichiometric air-fuel ratio and much greater heat of evaporation compared to conventional diesel fuels. However, autoignition of an ethanol spray has not been obtained yet in either experiments or numerical analysis. As the next step, we numerically examined several surrounding gas pressure and temperature conditions to make clear the surrounding gas conditions enough to obtain stable autoignition. One of the commercial CFD codes CONVERGE was used in the computational calculation with the considerations of turbulence, atomization, evaporation, and detailed chemical reaction. Required surrounding gas pressure and temperature for stable autoignition with acceptable ignition delay of an ethanol spray and feasibility of the development of high-performance compression ignition alcohol engines are discussed in this paper.

Description: Coal dust explosions are the deadliest disasters facing the coal mining industry. Research has been conducted globally on this topic for decades. The first explosibility tests in the United States were performed by the Bureau of Mines using a 20 L chamber. This serves as the basis for all standardized tests used for combustible dusts. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of a new 38 L chamber for testing coal dust explosions. The 38 L chamber features design modifications to model the unique conditions present in an underground coal mine when compared to other industries where combustible dust hazards are present. A series of explosibility tests were conducted within the explosive chamber using a sample of Pittsburgh pulverized coal dust and a five kJ Sobbe igniter. Analysis to find the maximum pressure ratio and Kst combustible dust parameter was performed for each trial. Based upon this analysis, observations are made for each concentration regarding whether the explosibility test was under-fueled or over-fueled. Based upon this analysis, a recommendation for future explosibility testing concentrations is made.

Description: This paper extends a recent theoretical study that was previously presented in the form of a brief communication (Zimont, C&F, 192, 2018, 221-223), in which we proposed a simple splitting method for the derivation of two-fluid conditionally averaged equations of turbulent premixed combustion in the flamelet regime, formulated more conveniently for applications involving unclosed equations without surface-averaged unknowns. This two-fluid conditional averaging paradigm avoids the challenge in the Favre averaging paradigm of modeling the countergradient scalar transport phenomenon and the unusually large velocity fluctuations in a turbulent premixed flame. It is a more suitable conceptual framework that is likely to be more convenient in the long run than the traditional Favre averaging method. In this article, we further develop this paradigm and pay particular attention to the problem of modeling turbulent premixed combustion in the context of a two-fluid approach. We formulate and analyze the unclosed differential equations in terms of the conditions of the Reynolds stresses τij,u, τij,b and the mean chemical source ρW¯, which are the only modeling unknowns required in our alternative conditionally averaged equations. These equations are necessary for the development of model differential equations for the Reynolds stresses and the chemical source in the advanced modeling and simulation of turbulent premixed combustion. We propose a simpler approach to modeling the conditional Reynolds stresses based on the use of the two-fluid conditional equations of the standard “k-ε” turbulence model, which we formulate using the splitting method. The main problem arising here is the appearance in these equations of unknown terms describing the exchange of the turbulent energy k and dissipation rate ε in the unburned and burned gases. We propose an approximate way to avoid this problem. We formulate a simple algebraic expression for the mean chemical source that follows from our previous theoretical analysis of the transient turbulent premixed flame in the intermediate asymptotic stage, in which small-scale wrinkles in the instantaneous flame surface reach statistical equilibrium, while the large-scale wrinkles remain in statistical nonequilibrium.