Computations of soot formation in ethylene/air counterflow diffusion flames and its interaction with radiation

Abstract

A methodology is presented which allows to predict soot levels produced in simple, one-dimensional laminar flames. The method is applied to the calculation of a set of well documented ethylene/air counterflow diffusion flames, using a detailed chemical mechanism (Davis et al., 1999 [1]) and a semi-empirical, two-equation soot model from Leung and Lindstedt (1991) [2]. Modifications of the original soot model are made in order to retrieve the experimental measurements of Hwang and Chung (2001) [3]. To account for radiative heat losses, a second series of fully coupled gas/soot/radiation simulations of the counterflow flames is performed. This allows to assess the effect of soot and gas radiation on soot formation and on the flame structure.