Coupling RSM with soot model for the study of soot formation in a momentum-dominated strained jet flames

This paper presents a comparison between the numerically determined soot volume fraction (SVF) in a momentum-dominated turbulent diffusion strained jet flames burning ethylene/hydrogen/nitrogen mixture in air with experimental results. The soot inception model used is based on the formation rate of two or three ring poly aromatic hydrocarbon with C6H6 as the soot precursor. Second-moment closure Reynolds stress method turbulent model is used in conjunction with the governing equation of mass, momentum and energy. The turbulent combustion kinetic chemistry interaction is modeled by choosing a chemical equilibrium non-premixed combustion model along with the species inlet diffusion probability density function (PDF). Soot radiation source term like P-1 radiation model is also included along with the turbulent combustion model. The soot turbulence interaction invoked uses single-variable PDF based on the temperature and mixture fraction (Z) for measurement of flame lift-off height, flame length and radiative heat loss. Equilibrium-based Lee soot oxidation model is chosen to estimate the hydroxyl (OH) and O2 species for the oxidation of soot particles. The numerical solutions for each of the experimental configurations are proposed by Mahmoud and co-workers for three different strained flames (4000 s−1, 7300 s−1, and 12,900 s−1). In each discretized finite volume cell, using a quadratic upstream interpolation for convective kinematics algorithm in spatial coordinate and time-bounded second-order accurate in temporal coordinate solution is obtained. All the above turbulence combustion interaction models are iterated with unit Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy condition. It is noted that the mixture fraction (Z) PDF used is very sensitive to the chosen turbulence combustion soot interaction models. Also, it is observed that the simulated outputs are in good agreement with the measured experimental data in terms of SVF, temperature both axially and radially. SVF increases with a decrease in the flame strain rate and shows the reverse trend in radially integrated soot volume reaction. In agreement with experiments, soot productivity shows a linear relationship in momentum-dominated flame with an increase in the strain rates for soot productivity, maximum mean SVF, exit Froude number, exit C2H4 flow rate.