An experimental/numerical investigation of the role of the quarl in enhancing the blowout limits of swirl-stabilized turbulent non-premixed flames

The blowout limits of methane/air non-premixed swirl-stabilized flames were measured with and without quarl. The addition of a quarl significantly enhances the flame blowout limits. The transition from attached flame to blowout was mapped. To explore the role of the quarl, a series of OH-PLIF/PIV experiments, coupled with large eddy simulations (LES) using a transported probability density function (PDF) model, were carried out on flames with and without quarl over a wide range of fuel jet velocity, U-f. The results show that the mean flow field is characterized by two recirculation zones. The existence of the quarl enhances this flow field by triggering a larger scale of reversal flow, penetrating deeply upstream into the quarl. This results in much earlier fuel, extending down into the air tube, where a diffusion flame is stabilized around the stoichiometric mixture contour and locally low scalar dissipation rates. The relative delay in fuel/air mixing in non-quarl flames results in a locally strong scalar dissipation rate layer overlapping the stoichiometric mixture contour, and thus, the flame is highly sensitive to local extinction with increasing fuel jet velocity. At high U-f, in the liftoff flame region, the existence of the quarl enhances the jet spreading and a weak recirculation zone around the highly strained jet is observed. Together with fuel jet spreading, partial oxidization of the mixture upstream the lifted flame base creates a wider range of burnable mixture along the axis in the quarl flames. On the contrary, the high scalar dissipation rate and the absence of a recirculation region in the proximity of the fuel nozzle in the non-quarl flame give rise to an earlier blowout.