Numerical simulation for the combustion chamber of a reference calorimeter

Abstract

This paper focuses on the numerical modeling of the effect of the height of a combustion chamber on the development of a reference calorimeter whose objective is to measure the calorific value of natural gas. The impacts of temperature, velocity, and mass fraction on the exhaust gases were evaluated by varying the height of the combustion chamber. The eddy dissipation concept (EDC) approach was used to model combustion with two different chemical kinetic mechanisms: one with three steps, called the three-step mechanism defined by default in the software used, and second skeletal model, which consists of 41 steps, through the ChemKin-import file with 16 species. The main result of this study is the selection of a combustion chamber height for the reference calorimeter that produces the best performance in the combustion process, which is 70 mm, as well as the main differences in using a three-step mechanism and a skeletal model to simulate an oxy-fuel combustion reaction.