Assessing uncertainties in prevailing methodologies for modeling radiative transfer in simulations of oxygen-enriched methane flames

Technical Paper
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Abstract

The fidelities and uncertainties associated with prevailing radiative transfer modeling methodologies and practices during simulations of oxygen-enriched flames where the gas temperature exceeds 2500 K are examined. Reference data in representative furnace environments characteristic of methane combustion at oxidizer oxygen concentrations of 30–100% were generated employing the spectral-line-based-weighted-sum-of-gray-gas model (SLWSGGM). Parametric uncertainties associated with two commonly employed WSGGM were assessed. While predictions from the exponential wide band model (EWBM) based WSGGM formulation agreed very well against reference data, significant errors in the radiative source term predictions resulted when the HITEMP-based WSGGM formulation was employed in high temperature regions beyond its intended application. The epistemic uncertainties associated with the wall temperature profiles decreased with oxygen enrichment. However, fully coupled combustion simulations of 100% O2–methane flames for a range of fuel inlet Reynolds numbers (2600–14,000) resulted in identical gas temperature profiles employing both the EWBM and HITEMP WSGG models. Further, their incident wall radiative flux predictions were within 10% of each other. Epistemic errors resulting from neglecting CO as a radiatively participating specie could become significant. Aleatoric uncertainties resulting from turbulence radiation interaction modeling were pronounced when flame radiation was the dominant contributor to the wall fluxes.

Keywords

Oxy-combustion CFD WSGGM Turbulence radiation interactions Uncertainty quantification 
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Notes

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

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Copyright information

© The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Chemical EngineeringUniversity of North DakotaGrand ForksUSA

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