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H.s. Zhen
C.s. Cheung
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Zuohua Huang
Xi'an Jiaotong University
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Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flows in Power Engineering, Xian Jiaotong University, Xian 710049, China
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 20 April 2015
Received in revised form 15 September
2015
Accepted 15 September 2015
Keywords:
BiogasH2 fuel
Flame stability
CO emission
Impingement heating
a b s t r a c t
An experimental study has been conducted to investigate stoichiometric biogashydrogen mixed fuel
flames and the combustion characteristic and heating performance of three biogases enriched with
hydrogen were examined. Both similar flame behavior and new finding are reported with reference to
the literature.
The dependence of flame stability on the fraction of hydrogen and the CO2 concentration was analyzed
in the aspects of fuel property alteration and flow aerodynamics variation. The experiments showed a
favorable effect of hydrogen and detrimental effect of CO2 on flame stability. Examination of flame cone
height showed that under constant Re and U, the cone height is longer at either higher hydrogen fraction
or higher CO2 concentration. In addition, at higher fraction of hydrogen in the mixed fuel, flame flammability strengthens, flame temperature enhances and CO emission reduces. Further, polyhedral reaction
cone was detected for stoichiometric flames under high hydrogen concentration conditions.
Great care was paid to the heat transfer behavior of stoichiometric biogashydrogen flames. First, when
the cone tip touches the copper plate, the stagnation point heat flux is not the maximum peak when compared to heat flux peaks at other nozzle-to-plate distance. Comparison between two flames of identical
cone height indicated that higher flame temperature is a dominant factor influencing heat transfer.
Further, longer flame height tends favor heat transfer only at large nozzle-to-plate distances.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Biogas is a future alternative to traditional fossil fuels. As it is
derived from landfills, agricultural wastes and other sources of biomass, biogas is environmentally-friendly and renewable. With
increasing interest in utilization of biogas, especially in rural areas
[1], better exploration of biogas is under investigation of many
researchers.
The constituents of biogas are mainly methane and carbon
dioxide, with smaller amounts of hydrogen sulfide, moisture and
siloxanes. The molar fraction of carbon dioxide (CO2) is high, which
ranges from 40% to 60% depending on the source of biogas, so biogas is a low-calorific-value fuel. Due to the high content of diluting
gas CO2, the combustion characteristics of biogas are inferior to
natural gas.
Many attempts were made to upgrade the combustion characteristics of biogas [25]. Lee and Hwang [3,4] proposed the method
of adding a higher-grade fuel to biogas to raise its heating value.
Corresponding author. Fax: +852 23654703.
E-mail address: ban18@126.com (H.S. Zhen).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2015.09.040
0017-9310/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
808
H.S. Zhen et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 92 (2016) 807814
Nomenclature
Re
qmix
Vexit
d
U
Vfuel
Vair
a
lmix
li
Yi
Mi
EICO
VH2
100%
VCH4 VCO2
established at the burner exit. For each flame established, the Reynolds number (Re) was adopted to represent the aerodynamic
characteristics of the jet flow:
Re
qmix V exit d
lmix
P
p
li Y i Mi
lmix P p
Y i Mi
fuel-to-air-ratio
V fuel =V air
H.S. Zhen et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 92 (2016) 807814
809
30
BG50
(%)
40
BG40
20
Instable Flames:
Flash-back
Blow-off
10
0
400 600 800 400
For the biogas of BG40, BG50 or BG60, both with and without
hydrogen enrichment, the flame stability was tested under the
operational conditions of 400 6 Re 6 800, U = 1.0. The stability
map obtained is given in Fig. 2.
Ignition testing results showed that pure biogas flames burning
BG40, BG50 or BG60, i.e. flames without hydrogen addition are not
stably established. For all experiments tested, burner-stabilized
flames occur only when a certain amount of hydrogen is introduced in and the fraction of hydrogen in the biogashydrogen
(H2) mixture exceeds a certain threshold value. For an example,
the BG60H2 flame at Re = 400 is stable when 10% hydrogen or over
10% hydrogen is added to the biogas. In contrast, the threshold
fraction of hydrogen for a stable BG50H2 flame is 20%, under the
same Reynolds number of Re = 400. Apparently, the biogas BG50
is of higher CO2 content in comparison to BG60, and thus it requires
a larger fraction of hydrogen to be added for flame stabilization.
Chao et al. [15] pointed out that as the fraction of diluting CO2
increases in the fuel mixture, the flame is more affected by preferential diffusion instability, and thus leading the flame closer to the
transition limits, i.e. from stable to unstable flame.
The stability map shown in Fig. 2 further reveals that for the
biogas of higher CO2 content, the number of stable flame operations decreases under the present experimental conditions tested.
The BG60H2 flame has 13 stable operations. In contrast, there are
only 9 and 6 stable operations for the BG50H2 and BG40H2 flames,
810
H.S. Zhen et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 92 (2016) 807814
respectively. For current experimental condition, BG60 has the lowest CO2 content and thus has the widest range of stable operation,
followed by BG50 and then by BG40.
Fig. 2 shows that the BG60H2 flame at Re = 600 is stable as 10%
hydrogen is added to the biogas. However, the 90%BG6010%H2
mixture cannot operate a stable flame at Re = 800, and the flame
is only stable with 20% hydrogen in the BG60H2 mixture. This is
because a nozzle-stabilized flame generally demands that the nozzle flow speed and the flame burning velocity match with each
other. It can be supposed that the flow speed at Re = 800 is higher
than what the laminar burning velocity of the 10%H290%BG60
mixture can match, resulting in instable flame. As more hydrogen
is introduced in, namely the fraction of hydrogen in the BG60H2
mixture increases to 20%, the laminar burning velocity of the 20%
H280%BG60 mixture which is higher than that of the 10%H290%
BG60 mixture, can match the flow velocity at Re = 800 and thus
achieve flame stabilization.
On the top of the stability map given in Fig. 2, flame flash-backs
were observed during experimental testing. For example, the
BG60H2 flame at a = 50% and Re = 400 flashed back and combustion occurs inside the burner nozzle. For the same mixture with
a = 50% but at higher Reynolds number of Re = 600 (or Re = 800),
stable flames are achieved, indicating that the flow speed at
Re = 600 (or Re = 800) has been sufficiently increased to match
the laminar burning velocity of the BG60H2 mixture.
The flame stability behavior of the biogashydrogen mixed fuel
can be summarized in two aspects. First, as compared to biogas,
hydrogen has wider flammability range and hence due to hydrogen
enrichment, the biogashydrogen mixture has extended flammability limits and better flame stability. This aspect of improved
flame stability originates from improved fuel properties. Similarly,
as the concentration of carbon dioxide in the fuel increases, the
flammability range of the biogashydrogen mixture narrows, leading to worse flame stability. On the other hand, flame stability is
subject to the aerodynamics of the jet flow, and a moderate range
of flow speed which matches the burning velocity of the flame supports better flame stability.
H.S. Zhen et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 92 (2016) 807814
811
Fig. 3. Photos of BG60H2/air flames (upper row), BG50H2/air flames (middle row) and BG40H2/air flames (lower row).
CO2 content and its lowest flame temperature. Among three biogases, BG60 has the lowest CO2 content and the flame burning
BG60 has highest flame temperature. Thus, the BG60H2 flame has
the least CO emission, among the three flames.
A comparison of EICO can be made between the biogasH2
flame in this study and the CH4H2 flame in Ref. [29]. The EICO
for the CH4H2 flame is below 3 g/kg in the range of 0% 6
a 6 50%, being much lower than the biogasH2 flame in the same
range of a. The reason is twofold. First, the CH4H2 flame has much
higher temperature, i.e. over 1800 C, while the biogasH2 flame
temperature is low, i.e. below 1500 C. Second, in comparison with
CH4, biogas contains a large fraction of CO2, which depresses the
conversion rate from CO into CO2 in the combustion process due
to chemical inhibition [28].
3.5. Heat transfer
In the literature, numerous studies have been performed on the
heat transfer characteristics of Bunsen-type flames burning hydrocarbon fuels [30]. While only a few attention was paid to hydrocar-
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H.S. Zhen et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 92 (2016) 807814
Table 1
Operational conditions for premixed flames at Re = 600 and U = 1.0.
H2 volume flow
rate
(106 m3/s)
Fuel
10%
20%
30%
6.060
6.070
6.078
6.325
6.085
6.327
6.847
6.088
6.320
6.811
4.057
3.851
3.613
5.472
3.335
4.984
7.613
3.010
4.426
6.602
6.086
5.776
5.419
5.472
5.003
4.984
5.075
4.515
4.426
4.401
1.127
2.406
3.871
4.690
5.559
6.646
8.459
7.525
8.852
11.004
7.18
7.27
7.36
7.88
7.47
7.98
8.96
7.59
8.09
9.01
1.13
1.14
1.16
1.24
1.17
1.26
1.41
1.19
1.27
1.42
BG60H2
BG60H2
BG60H2
BG50H2
BG60H2
BG50H2
BG40H2
BG60H2
BG50H2
BG40H2
40%
50%
2000
220
H = 8 mm
H = 12 mm
H = 16 mm
H = 20 mm
H = 24 mm
H = 28 mm
H = 32 mm
200
1800
180
2
1700
Flame temperature ( C)
1900
1600
1500
A, BG60
M, BG60
A, BG50
M, BG50
A, BG40
M, BG40
1400
1300
1200
0
10
20
30
40
50
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
Fig. 4. Adiabatic temperature (A, hollow symbols) and flame tip temperature (M,
solid symbols).
0
0
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
9
BG60
EICO (g/kg)
BG50
BG40
7
6
5
4
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
813
H.S. Zhen et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 92 (2016) 807814
180
220
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
175
Total heat transfer rate (W)
H = 8 mm
H = 12 mm
H = 16 mm
H = 20 mm
H = 24 mm
170
165
160
155
BG60, = 10%
150
BG40, = 40%
145
BG40, = 50%
140
8
40
20
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
20
24
50
220
H = 8 mm
H = 12 mm
H = 16 mm
H = 20 mm
H = 24 mm
200
180
2
16
Fig. 9. Total heat transfer rates of biogasH2 flames at Re = 600 and U = 1.0.
12
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
0
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
4. Conclusions
This paper presents an experimental study focusing on stoichiometric biogashydrogen/air flames to investigate the combustion
and heat transfer characteristics of three biogases enriched with
hydrogen. In each case, biogas was considered as the main fuel
and the molar fraction of hydrogen in the biogasH2 mixture was
varied from 10% to 50%.
Experimental data showed a favorable effect of hydrogen fraction and detrimental effect of CO2 concentration on flame stability.
814
H.S. Zhen et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 92 (2016) 807814
Conflict of interest
None declared.
Acknowledgment
The Authors thank for the fully financial support from the
Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong SAR (B-Q39F) to the present project.
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