Laminar flame speeds of lean high-hydrogen syngas at normal and elevated pressures

• Laminar flame speeds of lean high-hydrogen syngas were measured.
• A broad range of pressure from 1 atm to 10 atm was considered.
• The performances of three syngas mechanisms were examined.
• Good agreement between simulation and experiments was achieved.

The laminar flame speed is one of the most important combustion properties of a combustible mixture. It is an important target for chemical mechanism validation and development, especially at fuel-lean and high pressure conditions. In this study, the laminar flame speeds of two types of lean high-hydrogen syngas/oxygen/helium mixtures were measured at normal and evaluated pressures up to 10 atm using a dual-chambered high pressure combustion facility. Similar to experiments, numerical simulations of outwardly spherical flame propagation were conducted. Three chemical mechanisms for syngas available in the literature were considered in simulation and their performance in terms of predicting the stretched flame speeds, laminar flame speeds and burned Markstein lengths was examined through comparison between experimental and simulation results. It was found that at both normal and elevated pressures, the present experimental results agree well with those predicted by simulations using these three chemical mechanisms. Therefore, these chemical mechanisms for syngas can well predict the laminar flame properties of lean high-hydrogen syngas. Besides, the laminar flame speeds measured in the present work were compared with those measured from the heat flux method and large difference was observed.