A Pressurized Vitiated Co-Flow Burner and Its Preliminary Application for a Methane Lifted Flame

A new pressurized vitiated co-flow burner (PVCB) was designed and built for the investigation of lifted flame properties and was supported by a vitiated co-flow of hot combustion products from a lean H 2 /air flame at a controllable pressure; its preliminary application for a methane lifted flame was tested. The distribution of the co-flow temperature, oxygen mole fraction, flow rate, and pressure of the PVCB was measured and calculated. The research results show that the co-flow temperature range is from 300 to 1300 K, the background pressure range is from 1 to 1.5 bar, the stable temperature field of the PVCB is wider, and the background pressure of the PVCB can be controlled. The simulation results show that the PVCB provides a controllable, pressurized co-flow of hot and vitiated gases, which makes it possible to investigate flame stabilization mechanisms. The PVCB has the advantages of controllable background pressure and a stable temperature field. The well-defined uniform boundary conditions and simplified flow of the PVCB simplify the establishment of a numerical model and decouple the turbulent chemical kinetics from the complex recirculating flow. It can be widely used in the research on lifted flames. A lifted flame of methane was recorded under conditions of a co-flow temperature of 1133 K and pressure from 1 to 1.043 bar. The lift-off height decreased and stabilized with the increase in the background pressure. The laminar flame speed and the autoignition delay time were tested and simulated at the same time by Chemkin; the influence of background pressure on the lift-off height, laminar flame speed, and autoignition delay were analyzed. The results show that the autoignition, as well as the flame propagation, dominated the stabilization mechanism of the lifted flame in the PVCB.