A three-step reduced mechanism for MILD combustion

A previously derived two-step mechanism describing high-temperature autoignition in alkanes is augmented by addition of a CO2-production step to account for subsequent heat release, producing a three-step reduced mechanism that can facilitate computational investigations at MILD conditions. Comparisons of ignition-times and well-stirred-reactor S-shaped temperature/residence-time curves for propane mixtures suggest that this greatly simplified chemical-kinetic scheme may produce predictions of sufficient accuracy for many applications. A distinctive aspect of the proposed simplified description is that, unlike other available reduced mechanisms, it is free from empiricism, in that it is systematically derived from detailed chemistry by incorporating steady-state approximations for chemical intermediates.