Reexamination on methane/oxygen combustion in a rapidly mixed type tubular flame burner

To fundamentally elucidate the requirement for an inherently safe technique of rapidly mixed type tubular flame combustion, experiments have been made to investigate (1) the mixing process of fuel and oxidizer, and (2) the appearances of methane flames under various oxygen mole fractions. Three optically accessible quartz burners of different slit widths were made for measuring the mixing layer thickness with a PIV system. Under various rates of flow of the oxidizer to the fuel, a boundary layer type flow is recognized to dominate the mixing of fuel and oxidizer around the exit of the injection slit, namely the mixing layer thickness is inversely proportional to the square root of mean injection velocity. Using two stainless steel burners, combustion tests were conducted with the oxidizers of oxygen/air mixtures. To quantitatively investigate the requirement for tubular flame establishment, the Damköhler number, which is the ratio of characteristic mixing time to characteristic chemical reaction time, has been discussed in detail. The mixing time was calculated according to estimated mixing layer thickness, while the chemical reaction time was computed with the Chemkin code. The Damköhler number has proved to be a useful measure for success/failure of tubular flame combustion. When the Damköhler number is larger than unity, chemical reaction starts before complete fuel/air mixing and the tubular flame fails to be established; when the Damköhler number is much smaller than unity, the fuel and the oxidizer are completely mixed before the onset of reaction, resulting in successful tubular flame combustion. The results confirm our hypothesis in a previous study. Furthermore, based on the concept of Damköhler number, the minimum flow rate to achieve the tubular flame combustion could be estimated.