Combustion of Industrial Gas in Porous Media

Burner

Hui Liu, Wenzhong Chen
School of Materials & Metallurgy, Northeastern
University
Shenyang, China
sy_liuhui@163.com
Benwen Li
Electromagnetic Processing of Materials (Ministry of
Education)
Shenyang, China


AbstractThe stable combustion of industrial gas in porous
media burner was studied in this paper. A two-dimensional
mathematic model was set up, and the distributions of
temperature and concentrations of gas components in stable
combustion are computed by FLUENT. Results show that the
emissions in porous combustion of industrial gas are extremely
limited. Industrial gas and industrial emissions should be used
effectively, thus energy can be conserved.
Keywords- industrial gas; porous medium; combustion;
numerical simulation
I. INTRODUCTION
For a long time, problem in energy and environment
become increasingly prominent in our country, and has become
an issue that must be properly resolved. However, on the one
hand, problems in utilize of energy is low efficiency,
environmental pollution and serious waste problem, on the
other hand, a large number of low-grade energy cannot be
developed and used, in particular, the emissions generated by
industrial production. This kind of the gas has thin combustible
component, difficult to be used in conventional combustion
technology. The industrial gas is directly discharged into the
atmosphere, not only result in energy waste, the toxic
substances will also pollute the environment. Therefore, great
efforts should be developed to using the low-grade or low
calorific value of energy, taking environmental protection into
account, and to achieve low-emission of nitrogen oxides,
carbon monoxide and other pollutants. The combustion of
premixed gas fuel in porous media is a new, clean, active and
effective technology that stable combustion can be achieved
with low calorific value gas. This technology has significant
advantages of stable combustion, highly combustion rate, wide
flammable limits and low emissions, and has become a
research hot spot of domestic and foreign, known as the epoch-
making technology in recent years
[1.2]
.
Compared with the traditional free space combustion, the
premixed combustion in porous medium has an excellent
characteristic, not only low calorific value of energy can be
used, but also low emissions of pollutants can realized. The
combustion in porous medium has the good economic
efficiency and the social efficiency, which have broad
application prospect.
[3, 4]

II. PHYSICAL MODEL AND NUMERICAL METHOD
A. Physical model
The two-section porous burner studied in this paper is
shown in Figure 1. The computational region, which is 6.05 cm
long, starts from the small-pore ceramic which is 3.5 cm long
to the large-pore ceramic which is 2.55 cm long. The premixed
methane/air is preheated in the upstream section and reacts in
the downstream section. A two-dimensional physical model is
presented here.
B. Assumptions
To simplify the model, the assumptions used in the model
are as follows
[5]
:
- The porous ceramic acts as a gray homogeneous media.
- The boundary condition of the wall is no slip, adiabatic,
and the inner wall is gray media.
- Gas radiation is not considered.
- Potential catalytic effects of the solid under high
temperature are negligible.
- The Dufour effect, bulk viscosity, and body forces
are negligible.
- The reactants and products are treated as
incompressible ideal gas.

Figure 1. Diagram of the physical model
C. Governing equations
The two-dimensional approach which includes the effects
of solid- and gas-phase conduction, solid radiation, solid-to-gas
heat transfer, species diffusion, and chemistry
[12-19]
is written as:
1) Continuity equation
Fundamental Research Program of China (2006CB601203)
Outlet
Inlet
Downstream
section
Upstream
section
Premixed gas
Axis
Products
0 3.5 6.05
2041
978-1-4244-9439-2/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

( )
( )
g
g
0
t
c
c
c
+V =
c
u
(1)
where
g
is gas density; u is gas velocity vector; c is
porosity of the porous medium.
2) Momentum equation
( )
( ) ( )
g
g
p R
t
c
c c c
c
+V = V +V +
c
u
uu

(2)
where 2 g
2
C
R

o
| |
= +
|
\ .
u u
represents viscosity resistance
and inertial resistance produced by the viscosity effect and the
shape effect of the porous medium when the fluid passes
through it;
o
is the viscosity resistance factor;
2
C is the
inertial resistance factor; is the viscosity stress tensor.
3) Species conservation equation
( )
( ) ( )
g
g g
i
i i i i i
Y
Y Y W
t
c
c c ce
c
+V = V +
c
u V
(3)
where
i
Y is mass fraction of the ith species;
i i
V = u - u is
diffuse velocity of the ith species;
i
u is the velocity which
compared to the stationary coordinate system of the ith species;
i
e is the reaction rate of the ith production;
i
W is the molar
mass of the ith species.
4) Gas phase energy equation
( )
( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( )
g g g
g g g v g
g g
s
i i i
i
C T
C T p h T T
t
k T h Y Q
c
c
c c c c
c
+V + =
c
( | |
+V V + +
( |
\ .

u
u u u

(4)
where p is pressure; Q

is the heat release rate of chemical

reaction, and
i i i
i
Q hW e =

;
g
C is specific heat of the gas
mixture;
g
k is the thermal conductivity of the gas
mixture;
v
h is the volumetric heat transfer coefficient between
the porous media and the gas;
i
h is the molar enthalpy of the ith
species;
g
T is the gas temperature.
5) Solid phase energy equation
( )
( ) ( )
s s s s
e s v g s
1 C T
k T h T T
t
c c (

= V V +
c
(5)
where
s c r
e e e
k k k = + is the efficiency heat transfer
coefficient of the porous media;
c
e
k is the efficiency thermal
conductivity of the porous media;
r
e
k is the radiation heat
transfer coefficient. The radiation heat transfer can be
approximated by the effective heat transfer:
3
(16 / 3 ) /
r s s s
q T dT dx o o = , where o =5.6710
-8
W/m
2
gK
4

is Stefan-Boltzmann constant;
s
o is the extinction coefficient
of the porous media;
s
is density of solid;
s
C is specific heat
of the solid; T
s
is temperature of solid.
6) State equation
g
g
Wp
RT
=
(6)
where W is the mean molecular weight; R is the universal
gas constant.
D. Chemical reaction kinetics
The components of industrial gas are complex, here we
choose the gas provided by a steel plant as the research object,
and the main components are as follows:
TABLE I. VOLUME FRACTION OF EACH COMPONENT IN INDUSTRIAL GAS
component C2H6 C3H8 C3H6 C4H10 CO N2
volume
fraction
%
1.67 14.34 3.50 7.83 1.91 6.23
The simplified chemical reaction mechanism of combustion
in industrial gas is present here:
2 6 2 2 2 2 2
C H 3.5(O 3.76N ) 2CO 3H O 13.16N + + = + + (11)
3 6 2 2 2 2 2
C H 4.5(O 3.76N ) 3CO 3H O 16.92N + + = + + (12)
3 8 2 2 2 2 2
C H 5(O 3.76N ) 3CO 4H O 18.8N + + = + + (13)
4 10 2 2 2 2 2
C H 6.5(O 3.76N ) 4CO 5H O 24.44N + + = + + (14)
2 2 2 2
CO 0.5(O 3.76N ) CO 1.88N + + = + (15)
Considering the ith elementary reversible (or irreversible)
reaction with K chemical species, and it can be represented by
the following general form:

1 1
K K
ki k ki k
k k
v x v x
= =
' ''

(16)

( ) | | | |
1 1 1
K K I
v v
k ki ki fi k ri k
i k k
v v x x e k k
' ''
= = =
| |
'' ' =
|
\ .
[ [
(17)
The forward reaction rate coefficient
fi
k follows Arrhenius
dependence:
2042

exp
i i
fi i
c
E
k AT
R T
|
| |
=
|
\ .
(18)

fi
c
ri
k
K
k
= (19)
E. Property data of the porous media
The small-pore porous material in the upstream section is
PSZ (Partially Stabilized Zirconia), and the large-pore material
in the downstream section is aluminum oxide. The property
parameters of the porous media used in computations are
summarized in Table 1.
TABLE II. PROPERTY PARAMETERS OF POROUS MEDIA
Upstream Downstream
Porous media type 25.6PPC 3.9PPC
Pore diameter d 0.029cm 0.152cm
Porosity 0.835 0.87
Thermal conductivity Ke
c
0.2W/mK 0.1W/mK
Extinction coefficient s 1707m
-1
257m
-1

C 0.638 0.146
m 0.42 0.96
F. Boundary and initial conditions
At the inlet, for the gas phase
0 n in
300 K 0
i i,i
T , Y Y , u u , v = = = =
(20)
for the solid phase
4 4 s
e s,in 0
( )
c
T
k T T
x
c
=
c
(21)
and at the exit, for the gas phase
g g g
0
i
u v T
Y
x x x x
c c c
c
= = = =
c c c c
(22)
for the solid phase
4 4 s
e s,out 0
c
T
k (T T )
x
c
=
c
(23)
Initially, the fluid velocity of the computational region is
specified according to the velocity of the inlet gas mixture, and
a temperature profile in the solid is specified with a peak
temperature of 1500K in order to initiate the reaction
[7]
.
G. Numerical method
Using the commercial software FLUENT, stable solutions
are obtained by solving the transient governing equations. In
the software FLUENT, only the single temperature model
could be employed to solving the energy equations in porous
media, i.e. assuming the solid and the gas are at thermal
equilibrium, and the temperature of solid are equal to the gas
temperature. The application of the single temperature model is
not correspondent with practice. Therefore, the UDF (User
Defined Function) is necessary to modify the single
temperature model into two-temperature model, one for gas,
and the other for solid. The UDF is also used to define the
property data of the porous media, which change with the
temperature but cannot be defined by the original property
parameter model of FLUENT.
The SIMPLE algorithm has been employed to solve the
pressure-velocity coupling momentum equation. The
convective terms are approximated by the first-order upwind
schemes, while the diffusion terms are approximated by central
difference schemes. The under-relaxation iteration is used to
solve the stiff problem in chemical reactions.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The purpose of this paper is to examine the temperature
distribution and pollutant emissions of industrial gas
combustion in porous media by numerical simulation.
Figure 2 shows the gas and solid temperature profiles at
equivalence ratio | =0.65, inlet velocity
in
u =0.6 in premixed
combustion of industrial gas and air in porous media burner.
From the figure one can see that, in upstream region, the solid
temperature is higher than the gas temperature, unburned gas is
preheated by porous body; in downstream region, gas
temperature is about 150 K higher than the solid temperature.
As the flammable gas mixture flows through the porous media,
the reaction products heat the ceramic matrix by convection
and radiation. Because of the high emissivity of the porous
media in comparison with the gas, radiation from the high
temperature post-flame zone serves to heat the pre-flame zone
of the porous media, which, in turn, radiatively and
convectively heats the incoming reactants, so the methane/air
mixture is preheated effectively.
0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
1800
2000
T
e
m
p
e
r
a
t
u
r
e
,
K
X, m
Tg
Ts
,QWHUIDFH

Figure 2. Temperature distribution of combustion
Figures 3 and 4 show the concentrations distribution of
species in industrial gas and combustion product at equivalence
2043
ratio | =0.65, inlet velocity
in
u =0.6. In upstream region, the
concentration of fuel and air maintained the value at the
entrance, the molar concentration of combustion products
remain at around zero, meaning that there is no combustion
reaction in upstream region. The combustion begins when the
premixed gas reaches the interface of the porous medium. The
rapid reaction of fuel consumes large amounts of oxidant, and
the combustion products CO
2
and H
2
O are produced. At this
point, the fuel is almost completely consumed, the rest gas are
most of combustion products CO
2
, H
2
O, some are O
2
which did
not participate in the oxidant reaction, and a large number of N
2
.

Figure 3. Concentration distribution of species in industry gas
0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
m
a
s
s

p
e
r
c
e
n
t
,
%
X, m
CO
2
H
2
O
O
2
Interface

Figure 4. Concentration distribution of species in product
IV. SOLUSTION
In this thesis, FLUENT software is used to numerical study
the combustion properties and emission characteristics features
of industrial gas combusting in porous media, and examined
the effects of different equivalence ratios, extinction coefficient
and thermal conductivity of porous media on the combustion
features and emissions characteristics. and concluded as
follows:
1. Using the data and conditions in reference paper, the
premix combustion of industrial gas and air in porous media
layer was simulated, results show that: flame is stable at the
interface of porous media, and is near the downstream area.
2. When the premixed industrial gas and air combust in the
two-section porous media, the emission of NO
x
is only 2.5ppm
at =0.65, u
in
=0.6 m/s. The NO
x
emission obviously increases
with increase of the equivalence ratio, but it is still much lower
than the standard of the lowest NO
x
emission standard country.
The low emission property of the porous burner is proved.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the Fundamental Research
Program of China (2006CB601203). The corresponding author
gratefully acknowledges Prof. Li Benwen for his great effort to
improve the quality of this paper.
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0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
-2
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
m
a
s
s

p
e
r
c
e
n
t
,
%
X, m
C
3
H
8
C
4
H
10
CO
C
2
H
6
C
3
H
6
2044