TITLE:
On Numerical Simulation of Black Carbon (Soot) Emissions from Non-Premixed Flames
AUTHORS:
Ajit Patki, Xianchang Li, Daniel Chen, Helen Lou, Peyton Richmond, Vijaya Damodara, Lan Liu, Kader Rasel, Arokiaraj Alphones, Jenny Zhou
KEYWORDS:
Numerical Modeling, Soot Emission, Flames
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.2 No.4,
July
11,
2014
ABSTRACT: Soot emissions (PM 2.5) from land-based sources
pose a substantial health risk, and now are subject to new and tougher EPA regulations.
Flaring produces significant amount of particulate matter in the form of soot, along
with other harmful gas emissions. A few experimental studies have previously been
done on flames burning in a controlled condition. In these lab-experiments, great
effort is needed to collect, sample, and analyze the soot so that the emission rate
can be calculated. Soot prediction in flares is tricky due to variable conditions
such as radiation and surrounding air available for combustion. Work presented in
this paper simulates some lab-scale flares in which soot yield for methane flame
mixture was measured under different conditions. The focus of this paper is on soot
modeling with various flair operating conditions. The computational fluid dynamics
software ANSYS Fluent 13 is used. Different soot models were explored along with
other chemistry mechanisms. The effect of radiation models, quantity of air supplied,
different fuel mixture and its effect over soot formations were also studied.