Modeling of turbulent combustion of lean premixed prevaporized propane using the CFI combustion model

In this paper combustion of propane under gas turbine conditions is investigated with a focus on the chemistry and chemical kinetics in turbulent flames. The work is aimed at efficient and accurate modeling of the chemistry of heavy hydrocarbons, ie. hydrocarbons with more than one carbon atom, as occurring in liquid fuels for gas turbine application. On the basis of one dimensional laminar flame simulations with detailed chemistry, weight factors are determined for optimal projection of species concentrations on one or several composed concentrations, using the Computational Singular Perturbation (CSP) method. This way the species concentration space of the detailed mechanism is projected on a one dimensional space spanned by the reaction progress variable for use in a turbulent simulation. In the projection process a thermochemical database is used to relate with the detailed chemistry of the laminar flame simulations. Transport equations are formulated in a RaNS code for the mean and variance of the reaction progress variable. The turbulent chemical reaction source term is calculated by presumed shape probability density function averaging of the laminar source term in the thermochemical database. The combined model is demonstrated and validated in a simulation of a turbulent premixed prevaporized swirling propane/air flame at atmospheric pressure. Experimental data are available for the temperature field, the velocity field and the unburnt hydrocarbon concentrations. The trends produced by CFI compare reasonable to the experiments.