Le transfert radiatif joue un rôle important en combustion turbulente et doit donc êtrepris en compte dans les simulations numériques. Toutefois, à cause du fait que la combustionet le rayonnement sont deux phénomènes physiques très différents caractérisés par deséchelles de temps et d’espace également différentes, et la complexité des écoulements turbulents,l’effet du rayonnement est souvent négligé ou modélisé par des modèles très simples.Le couplage entre la combustion (LES) et le rayonnement avec l’environnement CORBAa été étudié. Dans le présent travail, quatre formulations de la méthode de Monte Carlo(méthode classique et méthode réciproque) dédiées à la résolution de l’équation de transfertradiatif ont été comparées sur un cas test de flamme 1D où l’on tient compte de l’absorptionet de l’émission du milieu en utilisant un maillage 3D. Le but de ce cas test est de valider lesolveur Monte Carlo et de choisir la méthode la plus efficace pour réaliser le couplage. Afind’améliorer la performance du code de Monte Carlo, deux techniques ont été développées.De plus, un nouveau code dédié au couplage a été proposé. Ensuite, deux solveurs radiatifs(Emission Reciprocity Monte Carlo Method et Discrete Ordinate Method), appliquésà une flamme turbulente stabilisée en aval d’un dièdre avec un modèle CK de propriétésradiatives, sont comparés non seulement en termes de description physique de la flamme,mais aussi en terme de performances de calcul (stockage, temps CPU et efficacité de laparallélisation). Enfin, l’impact de la condition limite a été discuté en prenant en comptel’émissivité et la température de paroi. / Radiative transfer plays an important role in turbulent combustion and should be incorporatedin numerical simulations. However, as combustion and radiation are characterized bydifferent time scales and different spatial and chemical treatments, and the complexity of theturbulent combustion flow, radiation effect is often neglected or roughly modelled. Couplinga large eddy simulation combustion solver and a radiation solver through a dedicated languageCORBA is investigated. Four formulations of Monte Carlo method (Forward Method,Emission Reciprocity Method, Absorption Reciprocity Method and Optimized ReciprocityMethod) employed to resolve RTE have been compared in a one-dimensional flame testcase using three-dimensional calculation grids with absorbing and emitting medium in orderto validate the Monte Carlo radiative solver and to choose the most efficient model forcoupling. In order to improve the performance of Monte Carlo solver, two techniques havebeen developed. After that, a new code dedicated to adapt the coupling work has beenproposed. Then results obtained using two different RTE solvers (Reciprocity Monte Carlomethod and Discrete Ordinate Method) applied to a three-dimensional turbulent reactingflow stabilized downstream of a triangular flame holder with a correlated-k distributionmodel describing the real gas medium spectral radiative properties are compared not onlyin terms of physical behavior of the flame but also in computational performance (storagerequirement, CPU time and parallelization efficiency). Finally, the impact of boundary conditionstaking into account the actual wall emissivity and temperature has been discussed.

The effects of swirl and spark location on combustion duration were studied in a constant volume cylindrical chamber of length-to-diameter ratio of 0.5. A chemically balanced methane-air mixture was swirled up to 628 radians per second by tangential injection. The chamber was closed by a valve before ignition by a spark gap of variable location and electrode geometry. The burning duration, indicated by repeated measurements of combustion pressure rise, was found to be a strong function of swirl intensity and spark location. Increased swirl resulted in decreased burning duration; mid-radius ignition location combined with high swirl resulted in the shortest combustion durations. Spark gap was found to have an important effect on the standard deviation of the burning duration, especially with high swirl. Various "flame holders" were installed to achieve shorter burning durations and lower cyclic variation. Results indicated that the best ignition source geometry was an unshielded, low-drag probe. This gave the least burning durations and the least cyclic variation at the higher swirl values. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Mechanical Engineering, Department of / Graduate

The usage of novel combustion technologies, such as Moderate or Intense Low-oxygen Dilution (MILD) combustion, in the future energy mix provides both a flexible and reliable energy supply, together with low emissions. The implementation though is highly situational and numerical studies can help in the assessment of said technologies. However, the existing uncertainties in numerical modeling of MILD combustion are quite significant, and as detailed kinetics should be considered while modeling MILD combustion, a major part of this uncertainty can be accredited to the kinetics. Combined with the fact that existing detailed mechanisms have been developed and validated against conventional combustion targets, there exists a gap between the performance of existing mechanism and experimental findings. To handle this discrepancy, Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) and Optimization are highly viable techniques for reducing this misfit, and have therefore been applied in this work. The strategy applied consisted of first determining the reactions which showed the largest impact towards the experimental targets, by not only considering the sensitivity, but also the uncertainty of the reactions. By using a so-called impact factor, the most influential reactions could be determined, and only the kinetic parameters with the highest impact factors were considered as uncertain in the optimization studies. The uncertainty range of the kinetic parameters were then determined using the uncertainty bounds of the rate coefficients, by finding the lines which intercepts the extreme points of these maximum and minimum rate coefficient curves. Based on this prior parameter space, the optimal combination of the uncertain parameters were determined using two different approaches. The first one utilized Surrogate Models (SMs) for predicting the behavior of changing the kinetic parameters. This is a highly efficient approach, as the computational effort is reduced drastically for each evaluation, and by comparing the physically viable parameter combinations within the pre-determined parameter space, the optimal point could be determined. However, due to limitations of the amount of uncertain parameters and experimental targets that can be used with SMs, an optimization toolbox was developed which uses a more direct optimization approach. The toolbox, called OptiSMOKE++, utilizes the optimization capabilities of DAKOTA, and the simulation of detailed kinetics in reactive systems by OpenSMOKE++. By using efficient optimization methods, the amount of evaluations needed to find the optimal combination of parameters can be drastically reduced. The tool was developed with a flexibility of choosing experimental targets, uncertain kinetic parameters, objective function and optimization method. To present these features, a series of test cases were used and the performance of OptiSMOKE++ was indeed satisfactory. As a final application, the toolbox OptiSMOKE++ was used for optimizing a kinetic mechanism with respect to a large set of experimental targets in MILD conditions. A large amount of uncertain kinetic parameters were also used in the optimization, and the optimized mechanism showed large improvements with respect to the experimental targets. It was also validated against experimental data consisting of species measurements in MILD conditions, and the optimized mechanism showed similar performance as that of the nominal mechanism. However, as the general trend of the species profiles were captured with the nominal mechanism, this was considered satisfactory. The work of this PhD has shown that the application of optimization to kinetic mechanism, can improve the performance of existing mechanism with respect to MILD combustion. Through the development of an efficient toolbox, a large set of experimental data can be used as targets for the optimization, at the same time as many uncertain kinetic parameters can be used contemporary. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 643134, and from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 714605. / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis investigates the use of the Stagnation-Point Reverse-Flow (SPRF) combustor geometry for burning low-grade solid fuels that are attractive for specific industrial applications because of their low cost and on-site availability. These fuels are in general, hard to burn, either because of high moisture and impurity-content, e.g. biomass, or their low-volatiles content, e.g., petroleum-coke. This results in various challenges to the combustor designer, for example reduced flame stability and poor combustion efficiency. Conventional solutions include preheating the incoming flow as well as co-firing with high-grade fuels. The SPRF combustor geometry has been chosen because it was demonstrated to operate stably on standard gaseous and liquid-fuels corresponding to ultra fuel-lean conditions and power densities at atmospheric-pressure around 20-25 MW/m3. Previous studies on the SPRF combustor have proven that the unique, reverse flow-geometry allows entrainment of near-adiabatic products into the incoming reactants, thereby enhancing the reactivity of the mixture. Further, the presence of the stagnation-end created a region of low mean velocities and high levels of unsteadiness and mixing-rates that supported the reaction-zones. In this study, we examine the performance of the SPRF geometry on a specific low grade solid fuel, petroleum coke. There are three main goals of this thesis. The first goal is the design of a SPRF combustor to operate on solid-fuels based on a design-scaling methodology, as well as demonstration of successful operation corresponding to a baseline condition. The second goal involves understanding the mode of operation of the SPRF combustor on solid-fuels based on visualization studies. The third goal of this thesis is developing and using reduced-order models to better understand and predict the ignition and quasi-steady burning behavior of dispersed-phase particles in the SPRF combustor. The SPRF combustor has been demonstrated to operate stably on pure-oxygen and a slurry made from water and petroleum-coke, both at the baseline conditions (125 kW, 18 g/s, ~25 µm particles) and higher power-densities and powder sizes. For an overall combustor length less than a meter, combustion is not complete (global combustion efficiency less than 70%). Luminance imaging results indicate the incoming reactant jet ignites and exhibits intense burning at the mid-combustor region, around 15 jet diameters downstream of the inlet, most likely due to enhanced mixing as a result of the highly unsteady velocity field. This roughly corresponds to the location of the reaction zones in the previous SPRF combustors operating on gas and liquid fuels. Planar laser visualization of the reacting flow-field using particle-scattering reveals that ignition of a significant amount of the reactants occurs only after the incoming jet has broken into reactant packets. Post-ignition, these burning packets burn out slowly as they reverse direction and exit the combustor on either side of the central injector. This is unlike the behavior in liquid and gas-fueled operation where the incoming reactants burned across a highly corrugated, thin-flame front. Based on these findings, as well as the results of previous SPRF studies, an idealized model of combustor operation based on a plug flow reactor has been developed. The predictions suggest that fuel-conversion efficiency is enhanced by the combustor operating pressure and lowered by the heat-losses. Overall, this effort has shown the SPRF geometry is a promising compact-combustor concept for self-sustained operation on low-grade solid-fuels for typical high-pressure applications such as direct steam-generation. Based on these findings, it is recommended that future designs for the specific application previously mentioned have a shorter base-combustor with lower heat-losses and a longer steam-generation section for injection of water.

Improving fuel flexibility for gas turbines is one advantageous property on the market. It may lead to increased feasibility by potential customers and thereby give increased competiveness for production and retail companies of gas turbines such as Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery in Finspång. For this reason among others SIT assigned Anton Berg to perform several ignition tests at SIT’s atmospheric combustion rig (ACR) as his master thesis project. In the ACR he tested the limits for how high amounts of inert gases (N2 and CO2) that the rig, prepared with the 3rd generation DLE-burner operative in both the SGT-700 and SGT-800 engine, could ignite on (Berg, 2012). Research made by Abdel-Gay and Bradley already in 1985 summarized methane and propane combustion articles showing that a Karlovitz number (Chemical time scale/Turbulent time scale) of 1.5 could be used as a quenching limit for turbulent combustion (Abdel-Gayed & Bradley, 1985). Furthermore in 2010 Shy et al. showed that the Karlovitz number showed good correlation to ignition transition from a flamelet to distributed regime (Shy, et al., 2010). They also showed that this ignition transition affected the ignition probability significantly. Based on the results of these studies among others a CFD concept predicting ignition probability from cold flow simulations were created and tested in several applications at Cambridge University (Soworka, et al., 2014) (Neophytou, et al., 2012). With Berg’s ignition tests as reference results and a draft for a cost effective ignition prediction model this thesis where started. With the objectives of evaluating the ignition prediction against Berg’s results and at the same time analyze if there would be any better suited igniter spot 15 cold flow simulations on the ACR burner and combustor geometry were conducted. Boundary conditions according to selected tests were chosen with fuels composition ranging from pure methane/propane to fractions of 40/60 mole% CO2 and 50/75 mole% N2. By evaluating the average Karlovitz number in spherical ignition volumes around the igniter position successful ignition could be predicted if the Karlovitz number were below 1.5. The results showed promising tendencies but no straightforward prediction could be concluded from the evaluated approach. A conclusion regarding that the turbulence model probably didn’t predict mixing good enough was made which implied that no improved igniter position could be recommended. However by development of the approach by using a more accurate turbulence model as LES for example may improve the mixing and confirm the good prediction tendencies found. Possibilities for significantly improved ignition limits were also showed for 3-19% increase in equivalence ratio around the vicinity of the igniter.