Author(s)

Abdelouahad Ait Msaad, Abdeltif Belcadi, Mustapha Mahdaoui, Elhoussin Aaffad, M’hamed Mouqallid

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Simulated results from a detailed elementary reaction mechanism for methane-containing species in flames consisting of nitrogen (NOx), C1 or C2 fuels are presented, and compared with reduced mechanism; this mechanism have been constructed with the analysis of the rate sensitivity matrix f (PCAF method), and the computational singular perturbation (CSP). The analysis was performed on solutions of unstrained adiabatic premixed flames with detailed chemical kinetics described by GRI 3.0 for methane including NOx formation. A 9-step reduced mechanism for methane has been constructed which reproduces accurately laminar burning velocities, flame temperatures and mass fraction distributions of major species for the whole flammability range. Many steady-state species are also predicted satisfactorily. This mechanism is especially for lean flames. This mechanism is accurate for a wide range of the equivalence ratio (1, 0.9, 0.8, and 0.7) and for pressures as high as 40 atm to 60 atm. For both fuels, the CSP algorithm automatically pointed to the same steady-state species as those identified by laborious analysis or intuition in the literature and the global reactions were similar to well established previous methane-reduced mechanisms. This implies that the method is very well suited for the study of complex mechanisms for heavy hydrocarbon combustion.

Detailed Mechanism; Reduced Mechanism; PCAF Method; CSP Algorithm

A. Msaad, A. Belcadi, M. Mahdaoui, E. Aaffad and M. Mouqallid, "Reduced Detailed Mechanism for Methane Combustion," Energy and Power Engineering, Vol. 4 No. 1, 2012, pp. 28-33. doi: 10.4236/epe.2012.41004.