Effects of Water Vapor Addition on the Flame Structure and Soot Formation in a Laminar Ethanol/air Coflow Flame

Ethanol is a promising alternative fuel to gasoline engines; however, the problem of particulate matter (PM) emissions still exists when ethanol is applied to gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines, especially under high load. Water injection is proved to be an effective way to reduce the PM emissions and engine knocking, simultaneously. In this work, a numerical calculation was carried out in an ethanol/air coflow diffusion flame to investigate the effects of water vapor addition on the flame structure and soot formation. A complete step-by-step decoupling method was proposed to numerically isolate the dilution, density, transport, thermal, radiative and chemical effects of water vapor by introducing several virtual species. Results show that the temperature distribution of the flame is mainly affected by the dilution effect and thermal effect of water vapor, followed by radiative effect and chemical effect. The mole fraction of OH radical increases because of the enhancement of the reaction H2O + H OH + H-2 and O + H2O OH + OH, while the conversion of CO to CO2 is promoted through the reaction CO + OH CO2 + H, due to the chemical effect. Soot volume fraction is also reduced, where the dilution and chemical effects play the most important roles. Hydrogen-abstraction-carbon-addition (HACA) surface growth and OH oxidation are the processes controlling the soot mass addition and consumption, respectively. HACA rate is mainly affected by the dilution and chemical effects. However, chemical effect has little influence on the OH oxidation rate, since the collision probability of OH with soot particles remains almost unchanged as a result of the increase of OH concentration and the decrease of soot volume fraction under the chemical effect.