Traversing Hot Jet Ignition Delay of Hydrocarbon Blends in a Constant Volume Combustor

A chemically reactive turbulent traversing hot-jet issued from a pre-chamber to a relatively long combustion chamber is experimentally investigated. The long combustion chamber represents a single channel of a wave rotor constant-volume combustor. The issued jet ignites the fuel-air mixture in the combustion chamber. Fuel-air mixtures are prepared with different hydrocarbon fuels of different reactivity, namely, methane, propane, methane-hydrogen blend, methane-propane blend and methane-argon blend. The jet acts as a rapid, distributed and moving source of ignition, traversing across one end of the long combustion chamber entrance, induces complex flow structures such as a train of counter rotating vortices that enhance turbulent mixing. In general, a stationary hot-jet ignition process lack these structures due to absence of the traversing motion. The ignition delay of the fuels and fuel blends are measured in order to obtain insights about constant-volume pressure-gain combustion process initiated by a moving source of ignition and also to glean useful data about design and operation of a wave rotor combustor. Reactive hot-jets are useful to ignite fuel-air mixtures in internal combustion engines and novel wave rotor combustors. A reactive hot-jet or puff of gas issued from a suitably designed pre-chamber can act as rapid, distributed and less polluting ignition source in internal combustion engines. Each cylinder of the engine is provided with its own pre-chamber. A wave rotor combustor has an array of circumferentially arranged channels on a rotating drum. Each channel acts as a constant-volume combustor and produces high pressure combustion products. Implementation of hot-jet igniter in a wave rotor combustor offers utilization of available high temperature and high pressure reactive combustion products residing in each of the wave rotor channels as a distributed source of ignition for other channels, thus requiring no special pre-chamber in ultimate implementation. Such reactive products or partially combusted and radical-laden gases can be issued from one or more channels to ignite the fuel-air mixture residing in another channel. Due to the rotation of the rotor channels, the issued hot-jet would have relative motion with respect to one end of the channels and traverse across it. This thesis aims to investigate the effects of jet traverse time experimentally on ignition delay along with other important factors that affect the hot-jet ignition process such as fuel reactivity, fuel-air mixture preparation quality and stratification and equivalence ratio. In this study, the traversing motion of the hot-jet at one end of the main combustion chamber is implemented by keeping the main combustion chamber stationary and rotating a pre-chamber at speeds of 400 RPM, 800 RPM and 1200 RPM. The rotational speeds correspond to jet traverse times of 16.9 ms, 8.4 ms and 5.6 ms respectively. The fuel-air mixture inside the channel is at room temperature and pressure initially and its equivalence ratio is varied from 0.4 to 1.3. The cylindrical pre-chamber is initially filled with a 50%-50% methane-hydrogen blend fuel and air mixture at room pressure and temperature and at an equivalence ratio of 1.1. These conditions were chosen based on prior evidence of ignition rapidity with the jet properties. The hot-jet is issued by rupturing a thin diaphragm isolating the chambers. Using high frequency dynamic pressure transducer pressure histories, the diaphragm rupture moment and onset of ignition is measured. Pressure traces from two transducers are employed to measure the initial rupture shock speed and ignition delay. Schlieren images recorded by a high speed camera are used to identify ignition moment and validate the measured ignition delay times. Ignition delay is defined as time interval from the rupture moment to onset of ignition of fuel-air mixture in the main combustion chamber. The ignition system is designed to produce diaphragm rupture at almost exactly the moment when jet traverse begins. Ignition delay times are measured for methane, propane, methane-hydrogen blends, methane-propane blend and methane-argon blend. The equivalence ratio of the fuel-air mixtures varied from 0.4 to 1.3 in steps of 0.1 for stationary-hot jet ignition experiments and in steps of 0.3 for traversing hot-jet ignition experiments. Hot-jet ignition delay of fuel-air mixtures, for both stationary hot-jet ignition process and traversing hot-jet ignition process, generally increased with increasing equivalence ratio. For stationary hot-jet ignition delay, the minimum ignition delay occurs between &phgr; = 0.4 to &phgr; = 0.6 for the tested fuel-air mixtures. Both stationary and traversing hot-jet ignition delay depended on fuel reactivity. In particular, the shortest ignition delay times were observed for a fuel blend containing hydrogen. Among pure fuels propane exhibited slightly shorter ignition delay times, on average, compared to pure methane fuel. The addition of argon to pure methane, intended to control fuel density and buoyancy, increased the ignition delay