Numerical investigation of the impact of h2 enrichment on lean biogas/air flames: An analytical modelling approach

Abstract

The transition from natural gas to renewable gases such as biogas and hydrogen creates an interchangeability challenge. The laminar flame speed SL is a critical parameter in appliance design as it is a unique characteristic of the flame mixture. It is thus essential to evaluate the impact of renewable gases on SL. In this work, 1D simulations were conducted in Cantera with the USC-Mech 2.0 kinetic mechanism. The SL of three base biogas blends (BG100, BG90 and BG80) was computed for H2 enrichment up to 50% in volume, equivalence ratio 0.8 ≤ φ ≤ 1.0, p = 1 atm and Tu = 298 K. It was found that the effect of H2 enrichment is higher for base blends with higher CO2 content as the thermal-diffusive and dilution effects of carbon dioxide are mitigated by hydrogen. The introduction of H2 also increases the H radical pool, which is linked with the increase in SL. A new correlation to model the impact of H2 enrichment, SL (xH2) =( ζ(φ)/S′L(x CO2)) xH2 ex H2 + S′L(x CO2), is proposed, which exhibits good agreement with the literature data and simulations. This equation can be directly used to estimate SL without the need for a priori adaptations of fit parameters as the contributions of CO2 and H2 are isolated in independent variables.