• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.75-84
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• 2007

The effects of hydrogen enrichment to methane on NOx formation have been investigated with swirl stabilized pre-mixed hydrogen enriched methane flame in a laboratory-scale pre-mixed combustor(nominally of 5,000 kcal/hr). The hydrogen enriched methane fuel and air were mixed in a pre-mixer and introduced to the combustor through different degrees of swirl vanes. The flame stability was examined for different amount of hydrogen addition to the methane fuel, different combustion air flow rates and swirl strengths by comparing equivalence ratio at the lean flame limit. The hydrogen addition effects and swirl intensity on the combustion characteristics of pre-mixed methane flames were examined using gas analyzers, and OH chemiluminescence techniques to provide information about species concentration of emission gases and flowfield. The results of NOx and CO emissions were compared with a diffusion flame type combustor. The results show that the lean stability limit depends on the amount of hydrogen addition and the swirl intensity. The lean stability limit is extended by hydrogen addition, and is reduced for higher swirl intensity at lower equivalence ratio. The addition of hydrogen increases the NOx emission, however, this effect can be reduced by increasing either the excess air or swirl intensity. The NOx emission of hydrogen enriched methane premixed flame was lower than the corresponding diffusion flame under the fuel lean condition.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.276-282
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• 2008

The effects of hydrogen enrichment to methane have been investigated with swirl-stabilized premixed hydrogen-enriched methane flame in a laboratory-scale pre-mixed combustor. The hydrogen-enriched methane fuel and air were mixed in a pre-mixer and introduced to the combustor through different degrees of swirl vanes. The flame characteristics were examined for different amount of hydrogen addition to the methane fuel and different swirl strengths. The hydrogen addition effects and swirl intensity on the combustion characteristics of pre-mixed methane flames were examined using micro-thermocouple, particle image velocity meter (PIV) and chemiluminescence techniques to provide information about flow field. The results show that the flame area increases at upstream of reaction zone because of increase in ignition energy from recirculation flow for increase in swirl intensity. The flame area is also increased at the downstream zone by recirculation flow because of increase in swirl intensity which results in higher centrifugal force. The higher combustibility of hydrogen makes reaction faster, raises the temperature of reaction zone and expands the reaction zone, consequently recirculation flow to reaction zone is reduced. The temperature of reaction zone increases with hydrogen addition even though the adiabatic flame temperature of the mixture gas decreases with increase in the amount of hydrogen addition in this experiment condition because the higher combustibility of hydrogen reduces the cooler recirculation flow to the reaction zone.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Combustion
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.23-32
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• 2011

To investigate cell formation in hydrocarbon/hydrogen/carbon monoxide-air premixed flames, the outward propagation and cellular instabilities were experimentally studied in a constant pressure combustion chamber at room temperature and elevated pressures. Unstretched laminar burning velocities and Markstein lengths of the mixtures were obtained by analyzing high-speed schlieren images. In this study, hydrodynamic and diffusional- thermal instabilities were evaluated to examine their effects on flame instabilities. The experimentally-measured unstretched laminar burning velocities were compared to numerical predictions using the PREMIX code. Effective Lewis numbers of premixed flames with methane addition decreased for all of the cases; meanwhile, effective Lewis numbers with propane addition increased for lean and stoichiometric conditions and increased for rich and stoichiometric cases for hydrogen-enriched flames. With the addition of propane, the propensity for cell formation significantly was diminished, whereas cellular instabilities for hydrogen-enriched flames were promoted. However, similar behavior of cellularity was obtained with the addition of methane to the reactant mixtures.

• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.213-221
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• 2016

The main purpose of this work is to test the validation of use of a four step reaction mechanism to simulate the laminar speed of hydrogen enriched methane flame. The laminar velocities of hydrogen-methane-air mixtures are very important in designing and predicting the progress of combustion and performance of combustion systems where hydrogen is used as fuel. In this work, laminar flame velocities of different composition of hydrogen-methane-air mixtures (from 0% to 40% hydrogen) have been calculated for variable equivalence ratios (from 0.5 to 1.5) using the flame propagation module (FSC) of the chemical kinetics software Chemkin 4.02. Our results were tested against an extended database of laminar flame speed measurements from the literature and good agreements were obtained especially for fuel lean and stoichiometric mixtures for the whole range of hydrogen blends. However, in the case of fuel rich mixtures, a slight overprediction (about 10%) is observed. Note that this overprediction decreases significantly with increasing hydrogen content. This research demonstrates that reduced chemical kinetics mechanisms can well reproduce the laminar burning velocity of methane-hydrogen-air mixtures at lean and stoichiometric mixture flame for hydrogen content in the fuel up to 40%. The use of such reduced mechanisms in complex combustion device can reduce the available computational resources and cost because the number of species is reduced.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.75-81
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• 2012

Autoignited lifted flames in laminar jets with hydrogen-enriched methane fuels have been investigated experimentally in heated coflow air. The results showed that the autoignited lifted flame of the methane/hydrogen mixture, which had an initial temperature over 920 K, the threshold temperature for autoignition in methane jets, exhibited features typical of either a tribrachial edge or mild combustion depending on fuel mole fraction and the liftoff height increased with jet velocity. The liftoff height in the hydrogen-assisted autoignition regime was dependent on the square of the adiabatic ignition delay time for the addition of small amounts of hydrogen, as was the case for pure methane jets. When the initial temperature was below 920 K, where the methane fuel did not show autoignition behavior, the flame was autoignited by the addition of hydrogen, which is an ignition improver. The liftoff height demonstrated a unique feature in that it decreased nonlinearly as the jet velocity increased. The differential diffusion of hydrogen is expected to play a crucial role in the decrease in the liftoff height with increasing jet velocity.