Combustion characteristics of a non-premixed methane flame in a generated burner under distributed combustion conditions: A numerical study

Distributed combustion is a novel technique in providing of thermal field uniformity over the entire of the combustor and in reducing of pollutant emissions. This study concentrates on combustion characteristic of a non-premixed methane flame for the newly generated burner under conventional and distributed combustion conditions. The non-premixed methane flame has been modelled by using a computational fluid dynamics commerce code. In the modellings, standard k-Ɛ turbulence model, the non-premixed modeling with and assumed-shape that is β -function Probability Density Function and P-1 radiation model have been used. The predicted temperature distributions have been compared with the experimental data under conventional combustion conditions and it has been determined that the predicted results are in good agreement with the measured temperature values. The predicted results show that distributed combustion enables more uniform thermal field under distributed combustion conditions in the combustor. In particular, it has been demonstrated that the temperature of the methane flame has been reduced significantly. When the effect of distributed combustion on pollutant emissions is evaluated, it has been concluded that NOX and CO emissions have been reduced down to nearly zero emissions while CO2 emission levels have been increased slightly at the combustor outlet under distributed combustion conditions.