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Article

Ignition Thresholds and Flame Propagation of Methane/Air Mixtures Ignited via Radiatively Heated Inert Particles

College of Mining Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Energies 2021, 14(16), 5173; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14165173
Submission received: 30 July 2021 / Revised: 16 August 2021 / Accepted: 19 August 2021 / Published: 21 August 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenges and Research Trends of Combustion Mechanism)

Abstract

The prevention and evaluation of explosions requires suitable standards of measurement. As such, for this study two ignition thresholds, the ignition temperature and the minimum ignition irradiance were selected as the assessment criteria. These ignition threshold values were experimentally determined by heating stationary inert silicon carbide particles via thermal radiation with a large spot size in order to ignite quiescent methane-air fuel mixtures. A high-speed Schlieren camera was used to capture the progression of the formation and propagation of the flames throughout the experiments. The results of the experiments show that the irradiance and temperature threshold are directly and inversely proportional to the particle size, respectively. Furthermore, the irradiance and temperature thresholds have similar tendencies within the flammability limits; wherein, the minimum value corresponds to fuel mixtures at a stoichiometric ratio, and increases as the equivalence ratio shifts toward the flammability limits. Irradiance thresholds, though, are more sensitive to changes in equivalence ratio than temperature. The temperature histories of the heated particle determined that when the irradiance is lower than its ignition threshold value, the heated particle-fuel mixture system will arrive at a thermal equilibrium, rather than ignition, due to the inability of the particle to reach the ignition temperature. This study also found that longer ignition times will result in a more drastic deformation of the flame fronts caused by natural convection.
Keywords: combustion; ignition thresholds; methane; particles; thermal radiation combustion; ignition thresholds; methane; particles; thermal radiation
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MDPI and ACS Style

Ma, J.; Zhang, C. Ignition Thresholds and Flame Propagation of Methane/Air Mixtures Ignited via Radiatively Heated Inert Particles. Energies 2021, 14, 5173. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14165173

AMA Style

Ma J, Zhang C. Ignition Thresholds and Flame Propagation of Methane/Air Mixtures Ignited via Radiatively Heated Inert Particles. Energies. 2021; 14(16):5173. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14165173

Chicago/Turabian Style

Ma, Junrong, and Changsuo Zhang. 2021. "Ignition Thresholds and Flame Propagation of Methane/Air Mixtures Ignited via Radiatively Heated Inert Particles" Energies 14, no. 16: 5173. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14165173

APA Style

Ma, J., & Zhang, C. (2021). Ignition Thresholds and Flame Propagation of Methane/Air Mixtures Ignited via Radiatively Heated Inert Particles. Energies, 14(16), 5173. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14165173

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