Phenomenological Simulation of Non-Premixed Gas Jet Flames Including Soot Formation and Oxidation

A phenomenological model (called here “Slice Model”) has been developed to simulate non-premixed gas jet flames including soot formation in the domain. The Slice Model is based on the self-similarity solution of gas jets and forced to satisfy momentum, mass and energy balances in every cross section. The Slice Model can predict the velocity, mass fraction and temperature field of non-reacting and reacting jets over a wide range of changes in the jet parameters. A sub-model for soot formation based on Hiroyasu’ model is applied to predict soot formation in non-premixed flames. Cantera, an open-source chemical kinetics software, is integrated with the Slice Model to predict the temperature distribution (based on equilibrium composition) of reacting jets. The soot formation prediction of the Slice Model is compared with experimental data in the literature. For velocity, soot mass fraction and temperature, agreement with experiment is about as good as it is for the much more computationally intensive RANS CFD simulations. On this basis, the Slice Model is promising as the core of a non-premixed natural gas engine simulation package under development.