Structural differences of ethanol and DME jet flames in a hot diluted coflow

This study compares the flame structure of ethanol and dimethyl ether (DME) in a hot and diluted ox- idiser experimentally and computationally. Experiments were conducted on a Jet in Hot Coflow (JHC) burner, with the fuel jet issuing into a 1250-K coflow at three oxygen levels. Planar measurements using OH-LIF, CH 2 O-LIF, and Rayleigh scattering images reveal that the overall spatial distribution and evolution of OH, CH 2 O, and temperature were quite similar for the two fuels. For both the ethanol and the DME flames, a transitional flame structure occurred as the coflow oxygen level increased from 3% to 9%. This indicates that the flames shift away from the MILD combustion regime. Reaction flux analyses of ethanol and DME were performed with the OPPDIF code, and ethane (C 2 H 6 ) was also included in the analyses for comparison. These analyses reveal that the H 2 /O 2 pathways are very important for both ethanol and DME in the 3% O 2 cases. In contrast, the importance of fuel-specific reactions overtakes that of H 2 /O 2 reactions when fuels are burnt in the cold air or in the vitiated oxidant stream with 9% O 2 . Unsteady laminar flamelet analyses were also performed to investigate the ignition processes and help interpret experimental results. Flamelet equations were solved in time and mixture fraction field, which was pro- vided by non-reactive Large-Eddy Simulation (LES).Jingjing Ye, Paul R. Medwell, Konstantin Kleinheinz, Michael J. Evans, Bassam B. Dally, Heinz G. Pitsc