The Effect of Thermophoresis on Flame Propagation in Nano-Aluminum and Water Mixtures

This study investigates the important role of thermophoresis in flame propagation speed of nano-sized aluminum particles and water mixtures. To this aim, a one-dimensional steady state model was developed based on mass and energy conservation equations considering the effect of thermophoresis. In order to simulate the flame propagation speed of nano-sized aluminum particles and liquid water mixtures, the flame structure (the computational domain) was divided into three zones: liquid water zone, preheat zone and reaction zone. The governing conservation equations were solved numerically using a finite-difference method. The predicted results were in reasonable agreement with literature data for the flame propagation speed. The modeling results demonstrated that although the effect of thermophoresis is negligible at micro-scales, it cannot be ignored for nano-sized particles. Furthermore, as the particle size decreases and the equivalence ratio and initial mixture temperature increases; the effect of thermophoresis on the flame propagation speed becomes more significant.