Are differential diffusion effects of importance when burning hydrogen under elevated pressures and temperatures?

Journal article, 2024

A ratio of turbulent burning velocity to laminar flame speed is well known to be abnormally high in lean hydrogen-air mixtures, with this phenomenon being commonly attributed to differential diffusion effects. Magnitude of such effects is known to be increased by pressure, but a few recent studies have indicated that the effects are mitigated when reactants are preheated. It is not yet known, however, which of these two counteracting trends is of more importance under elevated pressures and temperatures associated with combustion in engines. Accordingly, it is not yet clear whether or not models of differential diffusion effects are required for research and development of future ultra-clean and highly efficient engines that burn hydrogen (the emphasized effects are typically ignored in engineering computations). To clarify the issue, numerical simulations of lean complex-chemistry hydrogen-air strained laminar flames are performed by varying strain rate, pressure 1≤P≤50 bar, temperature 300≤Tu≤900 K, and equivalence ratio (Φ=0.4, 0.55, and 0.7). This simple problem is selected because maximal consumption speeds reached in critically strained (close to extinction) lean hydrogen-air laminar flames are considered to characterize the influence of differential diffusion on turbulent burning rates within the framework of Zel'dovich's leading point concept, which was well supported in recent studies. Computed results show that, even at Tu=900 K, the aforementioned consumption speeds are significantly larger than the unperturbed laminar flame speeds if the mixture is sufficiently lean (the equivalence ratio Φ=0.55 or lower) and pressure is sufficiently high (P≥30 bar). Therefore, differential diffusion effects are expected to be of importance when burning so lean hydrogen-air mixtures in engines and should be properly modeled.