Effect of fuel reactivity on flame properties of a low-swirl burner

•Low swirl burners (LSB) are capable of stabilizing low calorific value fuels.•CO2 dilution seems to have a more pronounced effect on rich blowout limits.•As the blowout approaches, the flame breaks down into smaller fragments.•Prior to the flame flashback, strong curvy structures appear at the flame boundary.•Deterministic features are more obvious before the flame blowout. The present paper examines the capability of low swirl flows in stabilizing low calorific value fuels. To such an aim, CO2 gas is used to adjust the reactivity of CH4/air mixtures. The results show that increases in CO2 percentage in the fresh mixture result in shrinking the burner stability map by moving the lean and rich blowout limits toward the stoichiometric condition. The effects of CO2 addition on rich blowout limits are more intense than the lean blowout limits. For instance, the equivalence ratio associated with the lean blowout increases by 0.23, when the discharge flow velocity from the burner rises from 1.5 to 5 m/s in the 40 % CO2 diluted case. Under a similar augmentation in the burner discharge velocity, the rich blowout limit reduces by more than 0.5 in the 40 % CO2 diluted case. Unlike the lean blowout, the rich blowout limit responds non-monotonically to the discharge flow velocity from the burner for both undiluted and diluted mixtures. For the 50 % CO2 diluted case, the low swirl burner operates efficiently at low discharge velocities (1.5 to 3.5 m/s), but it blows out at high discharge velocities (3.5 to 9 m/s). Furthermore, unsteady features of low swirl flame near blowout limits are studied in detail. Moreover, strong curvy structures appear at the flame boundary prior to the flame flashback. However, such structures diminish occasionally and specifically as the flame approaches the flashback. Some deterministic features are more obvious before the flame blowout than those before the flame flashback.