A novel heat flux burner system to determine the laminar flame velocity of liquid fuels

This article addresses burner design and flame measurement based on the heat flux method which is among the most precise ways of determining the laminar burning velocity of premixed flames. Chemical data are available for gaseous fuel flames using a variety of burner setups. However, the data for the laminar burning velocities of liquid fossil fuels and alternative biofuel blends, are still either incomplete, inaccurate or vary strongly for different setups, burner types and boundary conditions. A modified heat flux approach is found to increase the accuracy of the results of laminar burning velocities. For this purpose, a heat flux gas burner was combined with a novel liquid-fuel injection evaporating system called ‘HeatFluxER’ to achieve precise data for various biofuels and blends. Nevertheless, the purpose of this work is to obtain a robust inexpensive system for reproducible measurements. The gained measurement data of ethanol and isooctane depending on the initial gas temperature are in good agreement with recently presented studies of other groups and setups.

► We designed a novel injection evaporator (‘HeatFluxER’) to gasify liquid fuel.
► A heat flux burner was combined with this novel robust evaporating system.
► The combination allows precise measurements of adiabatic laminar flame velocities.
► Calibration measurements, parameter study and flame measurements were carried out.
► Burning velocity test measurement results are in good agreement with other groups.