Computational study on combustion and emission characteristic of piloted flames by varying composition CO2 of simulated biogas

Abstract

This study investigates the performance of flamelet model technique in predicting the behavior of piloted flame.A non-premixed methane flame of a piloted burner is simulated in OpenFOAM. A detailed chemistry of methane oxidation is integrated with the flamelet combustion model using probability density function (pdf) approach. The turbulence modelling adopts Reynolds Average Navier Stokes (RANS) framework with standard k-ε model. A comparison with experimental data demonstrates good agreement between the predicted and the measured temperature profiles in axial and radial directions. Recently, one of major concern with combustion system is the emission of pollution specially NOx emission. Reduction of the pollutions can be achieved by varying the composition of CO2 in biogas. In addition, the effect of the composition of biogas on NOx emission of piloted burner is still not understood. Therefore, understanding the behavior composition of CO2 in biogas is important that could affect the emission of pollution. In the present study, the use of biogas with composition of 10 to 30 percent of CO2 is simulated to study the effects of biogas composition on NOx emission. The comparison between biogas and pure methane are done based on the distribution of NOx, CO2, CH4, and temperature at different height above the burner. At varying composition of CO2 in biogas, the NOx emission for biogas with 30 percent CO2 is greatly reduced compared to that of 10 percent CO2. This is due to the reduction of the post flame temperature that is produced by the dilution effect at high CO2 concentration.