A fully automatic procedure for the analytical reduction of chemical kinetics mechanisms for Computational Fluid Dynamics applications

A new software called ARCANE has been developed to address the broad need for compact, computationally efficient chemical models for reactive flow simulations. Based on a new, fully automatic and optimised multi-step reduction methodology, ARCANE's purpose is to provide a convenient and more accessible framework for the analysis and reduction of chemical kinetic mechanisms in the general context of combustion chemistry. The capabilities and performance of the methodology are demonstrated through 3 case studies. First, a classical methane/air system with and without nitrogen/oxygen chemistry is studied as a benchmark. The framework is then applied to a kerosene/air mechanism with a multi-component fuel formulation, showing the ability of the fully automatic method to handle complex chemistry. Finally, the generality of the approach is confirmed by developing reduced chemical models for a hydrocarbon steam cracking process.