Numerical simulation of the laminar hydrogen flame in the presence of a quenching mesh

Recent studies of J.H. Song et al. [1], and S.Y. Yang et al. [2] (see also references therein) have been concentrated on mitigation measures against hydrogen risk. The authors have proposed installation of quenching meshes between compartments or around the essential equipment in order to contain hydrogen flames. Preliminary tests were conducted which demonstrated the possibility of flame extinction using metallic meshes of specific size. Considerable amount of numerical and theoretical work on flame quenching phenomenon has been performed in the second half of the last century and several techniques and models have been proposed to predict the quenching phenomenon of the laminar flame system (see for example [3] and references therein). Most of these models appreciated the importance of heat loss to the surroundings as a primary cause of extinguishment, in particular, the heat transfer by conduction to the containing wall. The supporting simulations predict flame-quenching structure either between parallel plates (quenching distance) or inside a tube of a certain diameter (quenching diameter). In the present study the flame quenching is investigated assuming the laminar hydrogen flame propagating towards a quenching mesh using two-dimensional configuration and the earlier developed models. It is shown that due to a heat loss to a metallic grid the flame can be quenched numerically. (c) 2010 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.