A numerical study of side wall quenching with propane/air flames

The head-on (i.e., stagnation) configuration has generally been used to numerically and experimentally characterize the flame-wall interaction with complex chemistry and multicomponent transport. Other studies have treated the transient case of a flame propagating toward a wall, and combustion in a boundary layer has also been dealt with. In this paper, a two-dimensional stationary model has been used to study the sidewall quenching,of laminar propane/air flames in a boundary-layer flow. This geometry may be described as a flame parallel to the wall that is swept away with a laminar boundary-layer flow while propagating toward and interacting with the wall. The main purpose has been to examine the extent to which the flame can propagate toward the cooled wall for lean flames compared to stoichiometric flames. A detailed kinetic model is used to examine the oxidation of both the fuel and the intermediate hydrocarbons (IHCs). For stoichiometric and near stoichiometric mixtures, the thermal coupling between the flame and the wall is small but significant. However, for very lean flames, the thermal coupling between the flame and the wall is found to be very significant. The intermediate hydrocarbons are the dominant emissions for stoichiometric and near-stoichiometric flames in contrast to the leaner flames in which the fuel becomes more significant. This implies that the IHCs are very important for the overall hydrocarbon emissions from flame quenching; as a result detailed kinetics of complex fuels should be used when determining the unburned hydrocarbon emissions.