Influence of Pilot Flame Parameters on the Stability of Turbulent Jet Flames

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive study of the effects of pilot parameters on flame stability in a turbulent jet flame. The Sydney inhomogeneous piloted burner is employed as the experimental platform with two main fuels, namely, compressed natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas. Various concentrations of five gases are used in the pilot stream, hydrogen, acetylene, oxygen, nitrogen, and argon, to enable a sufficient range in exploring the following parameters: pilot heat release, temperature, burnt gas velocity, equivalence ratio, and H/C ratio. The experimental results are mainly presented in the form of blow-off limits and supported by simple calculations, which simulate various conditions of the pilot–mixture interface. It is found that increasing the pilot adiabatic flame temperature benefits the flame stability and has an even greater influence than the heat release, which is also known to enhance the blow-off limits. Conversely, increasing the pilot burnt gas velocity reduces the blow-off velocity, except for the limiting case when the jet is fully non-premixed. The H/C ratio has negligible effects, while resorting to lean pilots significantly increases the stability of globally rich partially premixed and premixed jets. Such findings are consistent with trends obtained from laminar flame calculations for rich fuel/air mixtures issuing against hot combustion products to simulate the pilot stream.