The Critical Pressure at the Onset of Flame Instability of Syngas/Air/Diluent Outwardly Expanding Flame at Different Initial Temperatures and Pressures

Abstract

Syngas has gained attention recently due to its high energy density and environmentally friendly characteristics. Flame stability plays an important role in flame propagation in energy conversion devices. Experimental studies were performed in a cylindrical chamber to investigate flame instability of syngas/air/diluent mixture. A Z-shape Schlieren system coupled with a high-speed complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor camera was used to record flame pictures up to 40,000 frames per second. In this research, syngas is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide and diluent is a blend of 14% CO2 and 86% N2 with the same specific heat as the burned gases. Three main flame instabilities namely Rayleigh–Taylor (body force) instability, hydrodynamic instability, and thermal-diffusive instability have been studied. For the onset of flame instability, a power law correlation for the ratio of critical pressure to initial pressure of syngas/air/diluent flames over a wide range of initial temperatures (298–450 K), initial pressures (1.0–2.0 atm), equivalence ratios (0.6–3.0), diluent concentrations (0–10%), and hydrogen percentages (5–25%) in the fuel has been developed.