Conditional moment closure prediction of soot formation in turbulent, nonpremixed ethylene flames

Results obtained from incorporating a semiempirical soot model into a first-order conditional moment closure (CMC) approach to modeling turbulent nonpremixed flames of ethylene and air are presented. Soot formation is determined via the solution of two transport equations for soot mass fraction and particle number density, with acetylene and benzene employed as the incipient species responsible for soot nucleation, and the concentrations of these species calculated using a detailed gas-phase kinetic scheme involving 463 reactions and 70 species. The study focuses on the influence of differential diffusion of soot particles on soot volume fraction predictions. The results of calculations are compared with experimental data for three sooting ethylene flames and, in general, predictions of mixing and temperature fields within the three flames show good agreement with data. Soot volume fraction predictions are found to be in significantly better accord with data when differential diffusion is accounted for in the CMC-based soot model, supporting the importance of such effects in sooting flames, as previously noted by Kronenburg et al. in relation to methane combustion. Overall, the study demonstrates that the CMC-based soot model, when used in conjunction with a model of differential diffusion effects, is capable of accurately predicting soot formation in turbulent nonpremixed ethylene–air flames.