Acoustic Noise Reduction Under Distributed Combustion

Colorless Distributed Combustion (CDC) has been shown to provide unique benefits on ultra-low pollutants emission, enhanced combustion stability, and thermal field uniformity. To achieve CDC conditions, fuel-air mixture must be properly prepared and mixed with hot reactive gases from within the combustor prior to the mixture ignition. The hot reactive gases reduce the oxygen concentration in the mixture while increasing its temperature, resulting in a reaction zone that is distributed across the reactor volume, with lower reaction rate to result in the same fuel consumption. The conditions to achieve distributed combustion were previously studied using methane and other fuels with focus on pollutants emission and thermal field uniformity. In this paper, the impact of distributed combustion on noise reduction and increased stability is investigated. Such reduced noise is critical in mitigating the coupling between flame and heat release perturbations and acoustic signal to enhance the overall flame stability and reduce the propensity of flame instabilities which can cause equipment failure. Nitrogen-carbon dioxide mixture is used to simulate the reactive entrained gases from with the combustor. Increasing the amounts of nitrogen and carbon dioxide reduced the oxygen concentration within the oxidizing mixture, fostering distributed combustion. Upon achieving distributed combustion, the overall flame noise signature decreased from 80 dB to only 63 dB, as the flame transitioned from traditional swirl flame to distributed combustion. The flow noise under these conditions was 54 dB, indicating that distributed combustion has only 9 dB increase over isothermal case as compared to 26 dB for standard swirl flame. In addition, the dominant flame frequency around 490Hz disappeared under distributed combustion. For the traditional swirl flame, both the acoustic signal and heat release fluctuations (detected through CH^∗ chemiluminescence) had a peak around 150Hz, indicating coupling between the heat release fluctuations and pressure variation. However, upon transitioning to distributed combustion, this common peak disappeared, outlining the enhanced stability of distributed combustion as there is no feedback between the heat release fluctuations and the recorded acoustic signal.