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Experimental investigation on the influence of central airflow on swirl combustion stability and flame shape

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Abstract

Central airflow has been widely used to improve the performance of swirl burners in engineering applications. This paper reports an experimental investigation on the effects of such airflow on the combustion stability and shape of swirl flames. The results show that, for a low equivalence ratio, central airflow changes the flame shape from an “inverted cone” to a “rectangle” and significantly increases the flame height. Raising the speed of the central airflow increases the maximum temperature on the central axis of the swirl flame because the airflow enhances the upward momentum of the fuel. By contrast, for a high equivalence ratio, the swirl flame is prone to liftoff owing to the influence of the central airflow on the axial momentum of the fuel. In this case, increasing the fuel flow causes the swirl-flame blowout limit to increase and then decrease. This limit for different equivalence ratios is well described by dimensionless function. These findings will provide an important reference for the design of safe and high-performance swirl burners.

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Abbreviations

A t :

Total area of tangential air inlet (mm2)

D :

Ratio of vertical flowing air momentum to swirl air momentum

H :

Flame height (cm)

L :

Center axis distance (cm)

m 1 :

Central air mass flow (kg s−1)

m 2 :

Fuel mass flow (kg s−1)

m 3 :

Swirl air mass flow (kg s−1)

m ɵ :

Tangential mass flow (kg s−1)

m A :

Axial mass flow (kg s−1)

P f :

Combustion power (kW)

Q c :

Center airflow rate (L min−1)

r 0 :

Cross section radius of swirl generation chamber (mm)

R :

Nozzle radius (mm)

S :

Swirl strength

T :

Flame temperature (°C)

v 1 :

Central air velocity (m s−1)

v 2 :

Fuel flow rate (m s−1)

v 3 :

Swirl airflow rate (m s−1)

δ :

Dimensionless number of combinations

φ :

Equivalence ratio

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51604215), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2016M590962) and the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China (Grant No. 2018JM5078).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Safety Science and Engineering, Xi’an University of Science and Technology, Xi’an, 710054, China

    Linyuan Huang, Changchun Liu, Tiandiao Deng, Hua Jiang & Pengzhi Wu

  2. Shaanxi Engineering Research Center for Industrial Process Safety and Emergency Rescue, Xi’an, 710054, China

    Linyuan Huang, Changchun Liu, Tiandiao Deng, Hua Jiang & Pengzhi Wu

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  1. Linyuan Huang
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  2. Changchun Liu
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Contributions

LH contributed to conceptualization, methodology and visualization; CL helped in formal analysis, data curation, writing - original draft; TD contributed to resources, and writing - review and editing; HJ validated the data; and PW done the supervision.

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Correspondence to Changchun Liu.

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The undersigned author transfers all copyright ownership of the paper entitled “Experimental investigation on the influence of central airflow on swirl combustion stability and flame shape” to the publisher in the event when the work is published. All co-authors have read and approved the submission of the manuscript. The manuscript is not currently under consideration elsewhere, and the research reported will not be submitted for publication elsewhere until a final decision has been made as to its acceptability by the journal. The manuscript is truthful original work without fabrication, fraud or plagiarism. The authors have made an important scientific contribution to the study and are thoroughly familiar with the primary data. In addition, I state that there are no financial or other relations that could lead to a conflict of interest and that none of the paper’s concerns have been previously published. I sign for and accept responsibility for releasing this material on behalf of any and all co-authors.

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Huang, L., Liu, C., Deng, T. et al. Experimental investigation on the influence of central airflow on swirl combustion stability and flame shape. J Therm Anal Calorim 144, 503–514 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-020-10399-2

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