INVESTIGATING THE EFFECTS OF FUEL FLOWRATE AND EQUIVALENCE RATIO ON FORMATION OF SOOT IN LAMINAR PREMIXED FLAMES OF C-2 HYDROCARBONS USING A POD TECHNIQUE

In this research, a proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) technique is employed for predicting soot formation in laminar premixed flames of ethylene. Several flames at atmospheric pressure with different initial cold gas flow rates from 0.006 to 0.012 kg/s and equivalence ratios from 2 to 3.5 are modelled using detailed chemistry coupled with a particle dynamics solver. Radiative heat losses are simulated using a model developed based on zonal methods. The results from this embedded model show acceptable agreement with the experimental findings and reasonable agreement with previous numerical simulations with given temperature with an overall error below 20%. A surface matrix is formed and the POD technique is employed to find two algebraic equations for the maximum soot volume fraction versus equivalence ratio, which is considered as the basis vector, and the initial cold gas flow rate, which is considered as coefficient. Three rich sooting flames which were previously studied experimentally and their configurations inside the solution matrix domain are simulated using the final algebraic equations and the results show reasonable agreement with experimental observations. The good agreement between the results obtained from these equations and the experimental and simulations findings shows the outcome of this methodology to be an efficient tool in predicting the formation of soot.