Numerical simulation of spray combustion of conventional fuels and Biofuels

Abstract

Numerical studies based on steady Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for reactive flows were performed with the objective of validating advanced reaction mechanisms used to study spray combustion for both conventional and Biofuels. The SST-4 equation model was used to model turbulence, while more than one (comprehensive) reaction mechanisms were used to model the combustion of methanol, diesel and biodiesel using CHEMKIN-CFD and Fluent CFD code. Some of the reaction mechanisms used in modelling the current reactive flow simulation was already tested while others were developed during the course of this work. The computational results have shown good agreement with the available experimental data ofWidmann and Presser (Combustion and Flame, 129, 47–86, 2002) with the developed reaction mechanism slightly over predicting the temperature range. The CFD results have also shown that most of the harmful emission of the combustion of liquid fuels is less for Biodiesel compared to conventional diesel with the exception of CO2. This is in line with the finding of many experimental data. Keywords: combustion, biofuels, emissions.