Search

The direct-fired supercritical CO2 (sCO2) cycles promise high efficiency and reduced emissions while enabling complete carbon capture. However, there is a severe lack of fundamental combustion kinetics knowledge required for the development and operation of these cycles, which operate at high pressures and with high CO2 dilution. Experiments at these conditions are very challenging and costly. In this study, a shock tube was used to investigate the auto-ignition tendencies of several mixtures under high carbon dioxide dilution and high fuel loading. Individual mixtures of oxy-syngas and oxy-methane fuels were added to CO2 bath gas environments and ignition delay time data were recorded. Reflected shock pressures neared 100 atm, above the critical pressure of carbon dioxide into the supercritical regime. In total, five mixtures were investigated with a pressure range of 70-100 atm and a temperature range of 1050-1350 K. Measured ignition delay times of all mixtures were compared with two leading chemical kinetic mechanisms for their predictive accuracy. The mixtures included four oxy-syngas and one oxy-methane compositions. The literature mechanisms tended to show good agreement with the data for the methane mixture, while these models were not able to accurately capture all behavior for syngas mixtures tested in this study. For this reason, there is a need to further investigate the discrepancies. To the best of our knowledge, we report the first ignition data for the selected mixtures at these conditions. Current work also highlights the need for further work at high pressures to fully understand the chemical kinetic behavior of these mixtures to enable the sCO2 power cycle development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, syngas combustion was investigated behind reflected shock waves in CO2 bath gas to measure ignition delay times (IDT) and to probe the effects of CO2 dilution. New syngas data were taken between pressures of 34.58-45.50 atm and temperatures of 1113-1275 K. This study provides experimental data for syngas combustion in CO2 diluted environments: ignition studies in a shock tube (59 data points in 10 datasets). In total, these mixtures covered a range of temperatures T, pressures P, equivalence ratios φ, H2/CO ratio θ, and CO2 diluent concentrations. Multiple syngas combustion mechanisms exist in the literature for modeling IDTs and their performance can be assessed against data collected here. In total, twelve mechanisms were tested and presented in this work. All mechanisms need improvements at higher pressures for accurately predicting the measured IDTs. At lower pressures, some of the models agreed relatively well with the data. Some mechanisms predicted IDTs which were two orders of magnitudes different from the measurements. This suggests that there is behavior that has not been fully understood on the kinetic models and is inaccurate in predicting CO2 diluted environments for syngas combustion. To the best of our knowledge, current data are the first syngas IDTs measurements close to 50 atm under highly CO2 diluted (85% per vol.) conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, syngas combustion was investigated behind reflected shock waves in order to gain insight into the behavior of ignition delay times and effects of the CO2 dilution. Pressure and light emissions time-histories measurements were taken at a 2 cm axial location away from the end wall. High-speed visualization of the experiments from the end wall was also conducted. Oxy-syngas mixtures that were tested in the shock tube were diluted with CO2 fractions ranging from 60% to 85% by volume. A 10% fuel concentration was consistently used throughout the experiments. This study looked at the effects of changing the equivalence ratios (ϕ), between 0.33, 0.5, and 1.0 as well as changing the fuel ratio (θ), hydrogen to carbon monoxide, from 0.25, 1.0, and 4.0. The study was performed at 1.61-1.77 atm and a temperature range of 1006-1162 K. The high-speed imaging was performed through a quartz end wall with a Phantom V710 camera operated at 67,065 frames per second. From the experiments, when increasing the equivalence ratio, it resulted in a longer ignition delay time. In addition, when increasing the fuel ratio, a lower ignition delay time was observed. These trends are generally expected with this combustion reaction system. The high-speed imaging showed nonhomogeneous combustion in the system; however, most of the light emissions were outside the visible light range where the camera is designed for. The results were compared to predictions of two combustion chemical kinetic mechanisms: GRI v3.0 and AramcoMech v2.0 mechanisms. In general, both mechanisms did not accurately predict the experimental data. The results showed that current models are inaccurate in predicting CO2 diluted environments for syngas combustion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ignition delay times and methane species time-histories were measured for methane/O2 mixtures in a high CO2 diluted environment using shock tube and laser absorption spectroscopy. The experiments were peiformed between 1300K and 2000 K at pressures between 6 and 31 atm. The test mixtures were at an equivalence ratio of I with CH4 mole fractions ranging from 3.5% to 5% and up to 85% CO2 with a bath of argon gas as necessary. The ignition delay times and methane time histories were measured using pressure, emission, and laser diagnostics. Predictive ability of two literature kinetic mechanisms (GRI 3.0 and ARAMCO MECH 1.3) was tested against current data. In general, both mechanisms performed reasonably well against measured ignition delay time data. The methane time-histories showed good agreement with the mechanisms for most of the conditions measured. A correlation for ignition delay time was created taking into account the different parameters showing the ignition activation energy for the fuel to be 49.64 kcallmol. Through a sensitivity analysis, CO2 is shown to slow the overall reaction rate and increase the ignition delay time. To the best of our knowledge, we present the first shock tube data during ignition of methane/CO2/O2 under these conditions. Current data provides crucial validation data needed for the development of future kinetic mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]