The influence of dimethoxy methane (DMM)/dimethyl carbonate (DMC) addition on a premixed ethane/oxygen/argon flame

Two series of laminar premixed flames fueled by ethane-oxygenate-argon mixtures, in which ethane was incrementally replaced with either dimethoxy methane (DMM) or dimethyl carbonate (DMC) by mole fractions of 25%, 50% and 75%, were investigated at a fixed carbon to oxygen ratio (C/O) of 0.50 and a pressure of 40 mbar. Mole fractions for flame species were obtained by employing molecular-beam mass spectrometry with synchrotron vacuum ultraviolet light for ionization. A detailed kinetic model including the chemistry of ethane, DMM and DMC was constructed and tested against the flame measurements. The effects of the ad-dition of oxygenates to the species pool were studied, especially considering peak mole fractions of harmful emissions and relevant intermediates. The results indicate that the variation behaviors are mainly related to "volume effects" without strong chemical interactions between the fuel pairs. DMM and DMC show com-parable performance in inhibiting soot precursors with the same addition amount. Formaldehyde is a major oxygenated emission in both flame series, almost linearly increasing with the addition of DMM or DMC, which is the consequence of the structural and kinetic characteristics of both oxygenates. (C) 2016 by The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc.