A simplification of pyrolytic reaction model of hydrocarbon fuel and its application in simulation of heated channel flow

The pyrolytic reaction model plays an important role in studying heat and mass transfer of heated channel flow with pyrolysis because of the influence of pyrolysis on mass and energy balance. So, focusing on the application of pyrolysis reaction model of hydrocarbon fuel in simulation, an approach to simplify the pyrolytic reaction model of hydrocarbon fuel was proposed to reduce the computational workload of simulation. The basic idea of simplification lies in the fact that species with similar critical properties have similar thermophysical properties, and they could be represented as single specie based on corresponding states principle (CSP), so the number of specie equations in the numerical model was significantly reduced according to combining species in products. Numerical tests indicate that the relative difference, caused by simplification, is within 1%. In addition, the species equations are decreased from 18 to 10 and the computational efficiency is doubled. Therefore, this simplification could serve as an effective way for pyrolytic reaction model of hydrocarbon fuel in terms of model accuracy and efficiency.