Mathematical modeling of a swirling jet in applications to low-emission combustion of low-grade fuels

Abstract

The search for new solutions in the field of energy, preventing negative impact on the environment, is one of the priority tasks for modern society. Natural gas occupies a stable position in the demand of the UES of Russia for fossil fuel. Biogas is a possible alternative fuel from organic waste. Biogas has an increased content of carbon dioxide, which affects the speed of flame propagation, and a lower content of methane, which reduces its heat of combustion. However, the combined combustion of natural gas and biogas, provided that the mixture of fuel and oxidizer is well mixed, can, on the one hand, reduce the maximum adiabatic temperature in the combustion chamber of power boilers at TPPs, and, on the other, increase the stability of biogas combustion. For the combined combustion of natural gas and biogas in operating power boilers, it is necessary to reconstruct the existing burners. For a high-quality reconstruction of burners capable of providing stable and low-toxic combustion of fuel, it is important to have theoretical data on the combustion effect of combustion of combinations of organic fuels on the temperature distribution in the combustion zone and on its maximum value. In this paper, self-similar solutions of the energy equation for axisymmetric motion of a liquid (gas) in a model of a viscous incompressible medium are obtained. Basing on them, a stationary temperature field in swirling jets is constructed. A set of programs based on the ANSYS Fluent software solver has been developed for modeling and researching of thermal and gas-dynamic processes in the combustion chamber. On the basis of the $k$ - $epsilon$ (realizable) turbulence model, the combustion process of a swirling fuel-air mixture is simulated. The results of an analytical and numerical study of the temperature and carbon dioxide distribution in the jet are presented.

Keywords

• gas dynamics”, “emissions”, “temperature”, “power boiler”, “natural gas”, “biogas