Effects of Droplet Size and Air Preheating on Soot Formation in Turbulent Combustion of Liquid Fuel

The present study is concerned with the effect of fuel droplet size, air inlet preheating and air swirl number on complex soot process in a turbulent liquid-fuelled combustor. A hybrid Eulerian-Lagrangian method is employed to model the reactive flow-field inside the combustor. Equations governing the gas phase are solved by a control volume based semi-implicit iterative procedure while the time-dependent differential equations for each sizes of the fuel droplets are integrated by a semi-analytic method. The processes leading to soot consist of both formation and combustion. Soot formation is simulated using a two-step model while a finite rate combustion model with eddy dissipation concept is implemented for soot combustion. Also, mathematical models for turbulence, combustion, and radiation are used to take account the effects of these processes. Results reveal the significant influence of liquid fuel droplet size, air inlet temperatures and swirl numbers on soot emission from turbulent spray flames. The predictions show that reduction of spray droplet size and increases of air inlet temperature and swirl numbers considerably, increases soot emission from spray flames.