Experimental study of the kinetics of dry, forward combustion. Final report

Abstract

Results are presented of an experimental investigation of dry, forward combustion with two main objectives, viz, (1) to develop a method for determining the kinetic perameters of fuel laydown and burnoff from combustion tube data, and (2) to evaluate them for a particular crude-sand mixture. In the light of past experimental work, a two-step chain reaction model is postulated in which fuel laydown and burnoff are considered as competitive kinetic reactions. Laboratory equipment consisting of a combustion tube assembly and sampling probe, a flow control system, an electronic control assembly, and a fluid analysis system are described in detail. The sampling probe provides a novel method for taking fluid samples at selected interior points within the combustion cell. Six experimental runs were performed using a 27/sup 0/ API Prudhoe Bay crude. Analyses of the data indicte that, in addition to the coke residue, some light ends of the crude enter into the total fuel consumed by the burning zone. The use of the moveable sampling probe permitted the reconstruction of CO + CO/sub 2/ production rate curves as functions of time and distance. A technique is presented for solving the integral equation and estimating the activation energies, pre-exponential factors, andmore » some associated constants for fuel deposition and combustion. It was found that operating pressure has essentially no effect on the exponential energy, but it does affect the preexponential (or frequency) factor. It is concluded that the essential phenomena of forward combustion can be adequately depicted by the two-step chain reaction concept, and that kinetic data,or their bounds, can be determined from combustion tube data.« less