Simulations of OH* light emission from H2/air flames in real burners – TOHREAU

TOHREAU addresses the problem of the simulation of H2/air flames stabilized in real burners, i.e. with a complex geometry and operating close to the real conditions, to prepare their optimization for this new combustible and the switch from hydrocarbon fuel powered burners to H2 powered systems. H2/air flames are barely visible by eye but the OH* radical is abundant and has a large emission intensity in the UV band, which can be detected by many industrial sensors. The project aims at validating a framework for the simulation of the OH* signal emitted by H2/air flames with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools. These simulations make use of a skeletal description of the H2/air combustion kinetics that includes the OH* species. They are confronted to measurements made in different target experimental setups of increasing complexity that reproduce the main features of industrial burners. The cases investigated comprise a set of geometrical archetypes of flames found for heat and power generation in domestic and industrial burners, including laminar and turbulent flames, premixed and non-premixed injection systems that operate at ambient and high pressure and in which the reactants are eventually preheated. Systematic comparisons between simulations and experiments for the velocity field and flame structure will be carried out resulting in a robust methodology to predict the OH* luminosity of H2/air flames and opening the path for optimization of the H2/air burner design based on CFD.