Combustion of a hydrogen jet normal to multiple pairs of opposing methane–air mixtures

Abstract

The combustion performance of a cylindrical burner accommodating up to six multiple pairs of opposing methane–air mixtures with a cross-flow of hydrogen was addressed. The cross-flow initially duplicated the stagnation impact and enriched the vortical structures. Aided by the resulting flow strain, the transport of heat and active species from the hydrogen oxidation zone to the methane reaction zones accelerated the combustion across the opposing premixed flames and reduced the peak temperature across the outer diffusion flame. Increasing the cross-flow/opposing jets’ velocity ratio to 0.89 merged the two stagnation centers and maximized the shearing stress. By the slight increase in the velocity ratio to 1.07, the H and OH pools provided for methane combustion became closer to the ports such that a hydrogen/methane mass percent of 10.3% extended the stoichiometric blowout velocity from 28.3 to 35.7 m/s. Since the turbulent kinetic energy thus increased to 8.4 m2/s2, the firing intensity reached values as high as 48.2 MW/m3. Not only was there a reduction in the residence time for NOx formation, but also the blowout velocity relative gain overrode the relative increase in the NOx formation rates such that the NOx emission index decreased to 17 g/MWhr. By the excessive increase in velocity ratio, the vortical structures shrank such that the NOx exponential increase became dominant above 21 ppm. With fuel-lean mixtures, the hydrogen was partially combusted by the excess air from the opposing flames but the blowout velocity decreased to 13.1 m/s at Φ = 0.50. The hydrogen flame NOx emissions decreased by providing the excess air at larger jets’ diameter/separation ratios, thus reducing the residence times for thermal NOx formation and simultaneously interrupting the prompt NOx formation. At the lean operational limit, tripling the number of opposing jets decreased the hydrogen flame length by 54% such that the NOx emissions decreased by 38.4%.