The Full-Spectrum Correlated-k Distribution for thermal radiation from molecular gas-particulate mixtures

A new Full-Spectrum Correlated-k Distribution has been developed, which provides an efficient means for accurate radiative transfer calculations in absorbing/emitting molecular gases. The Full-Spectrum Correlated-k Distribution can be used together with any desired solution method to solve the radiative transfer equation for a small number of spectral absorption coefficients, followed by numerical quadrature. It is shown that the Weighted-Sum-of-Gray-Gases model is effectively only a crude implementation of the Full-Spectrum Correlated-k Distribution approach. Within the limits of the Full-Spectrum Correlated-k Distribution model (i.e., an absorption coefficient obeying the so-called "scaling approximation"), the method is exact. This is demonstrated by comparison with line-by-line calculations for a one-dimensional CO2-N-2 gas mixture as well as a two-dimensional CO2-H2O-N-2 gas mixture with varying temperature and mole fraction fields.