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Mechanical Engineering
Lean Premixed Prevaporized Burner
research article Received 21 September 2015; accepted after revision 08 January 2016
Abstract 1 Introduction
The last decades have emphasized the requirement for alter- In the 20th century, a major achievement of combustion
native energy sources, particularly in the transport sector, research was to develop highly efficient combustion systems
where combustible liquid fuels are expected to dominate in the [1]. Furthermore, fossil fuels have to be replaced with renewa-
foreseeable future. In such applications, the fuel must be effi- bles, in order to reach sustainable economy. The challenge of
ciently atomized, evaporated, and mixed with the combustion the 21st century is to find the best ratio of crop usage between
air before it reaches the flame front, in order to meet the latest food and biofuel [2]. Due to the lack of viable alternative solu-
pollutant emission standards. tion, combustible liquid fuels seems to dominate the transpor-
Hence, this paper investigates the utilization of nine differ- tation sector particularly in the foreseeable future [3].
ent fossil and renewable liquid fuels. The domain of the analy- Globally, standards force the oil companies to add fatty
sis is a lean premixed prevaporized burner equipped with an acid methyl esters (FAMEs) to the diesel fuel. In the European
air blast atomizer and a mixing tube. Analytical calculations Union, the EN 590 diesel oil standard allows maximum 7%
are performed to determine the evaporation process after the FAME content by volume. It is fulfilled especially by adding
atomization; then the evaporation time is compared to the resi- rapeseed methyl ester (RME). In parallel, transesterified soy-
dence time of the droplets in the mixing tube. The effect of pre- bean oil is the typical diesel oil additive in the US. The scope of
heating both the fuel and the combustion air is also examined the current paper is to compare the atomization and evaporation
to determine proper combustion conditions even for the low characteristics of popular renewable liquid fuels with fossil
volatile crude vegetable oils. ones. These are ethanol, n-heptane, diesel oil (according to EN
590), RME, and the following crude vegetable oils: jatropha,
Keywords palm, rapeseed, soybean, and sunflower.
lean premixed prevaporized, air blast atomization, evapora- To date, the attention is focused on the possibilities of direct
tion, renewable fuel utilization of crude vegetable oils in our current heat engines.
Furthermore, setting development goals is of primary impor-
tance. Therefore, the aim of the present paper is to evaluate
the interchangeability of diesel oil to crude vegetable oils in
an atmospheric burner. However, there are high-pressure appli-
cations, (e.g., gas turbines, internal combustion engines, high-
pressure furnaces) the most crucial part of their operation is the
startup process [4]. Therefore, the atmospheric back pressure
is used at the burner tip. It is out of the question that the most
likely advancement towards clean combustion is to increase the
ratio of renewables in the utilized fuel [3]. Despite that, the
worst-case scenario is to be investigated from combustion point
of view, namely, utilizing pure renewable fuels. Of course, by
blending, the situation is always better [5].
1
Department of Energy Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Historically, the air blast atomizer was developed by Lefebvre
Budapest University of Technology and Economics [6], which is capable of operating even at full load and idle fuel
H-1111 Budapest, Műegyetem rkp. 3., Hungary flow rates (i.e. this ratio is 50:1 in aero propulsion gas turbines).
*
Corresponding author, e-mail: jozsa@energia.bme.hu Furthermore, the mentioned class of atomizers is widely used in
[kg/h]
2
investigated in this paper. It features a mixing tube, where the expansion
paper. The combustion air enters the mixing tube through four Fig. 2 SMD of different fuel types at various atomizing gauge pressures
radial bores and fifteen 45° slots. The velocity of the combus-
tion air is more than a magnitude lower than that of the atom-
izing free jet. Therefore, the effect of the former is neglected in Then the obtained results were compared to the adiabatic
the present investigation. expansion of the atomizing air. Nonetheless, there is no signifi-
The atomizing air enters the mixing tube through an annulus cant difference between them, the equation of the fitted curve
with 0.8 mm inner and 1.4 mm outer diameter. At the axis, the is used for further calculations. The difference in the mass flow
0.4 mm diameter fuel jet enters. Due to the velocity difference rate is observable between the trends above 2 bar atomizing
between the two streams, the atomizing air breaks up the fuel gauge pressure. This phenomenon can be explained by the non-
jet into small droplets. adiabatic process in the reality, i.e., the heat transfer between
the environment and the jet increases by the increasing tem-
perature difference between them.
3 Theoretical background
In order to characterize a spray, the Sauter Mean Diameter
(SMD or D32) is the most widely used property. Rayleigh was the
first, who described the droplet formation from a free liquid jet in
1878 [14]. To date, there is even no analytical solution to deter-
Fig. 1 Schematical drawing of the LPP burner mine the SMD for practical atomizers accurately. Therefore,
various semi-empirical formulas were developed for specific
Two further assumptions are made in order to simplify the atomizer types [15]. The widely recognized formula for air blast
calculation method. First, there is one-way coupling between atomizers was published by Rizk and Lefebvre in 1984 [16]:
the atomizing and the fuel jet. Second, the droplets are trave-
σ
0.4
1
0.4
ling at the axis. Hence, the problem becomes one dimensional. SMD = d 0 0.48 1 +
ρ A,0U R ,0d L ,0 ALR
2
By the mentioned assumptions, the residence time of the spray
(1)
is certainly underestimated. Therefore, the presented method is µ L2
0.5
1
+0.15 1+
conservative. More details about the experiments related to this σ , d ALR
ρ L 0 0
burner can be found in the literature (see, e.g., [9,13]).
In order to determine the accurate mass flow rate of the However, Eq. (1) was developed for UA,0 of 10-120 m/s, uti-
atomizing air at a given atomizing gauge pressure, a measure- lizing kerosene, gas oil, and blended oils, it was turned out by
ment was carried out. The configuration consisted a pressure Phase Doppler Anemometry (PDA) analysis of the investigated
Table 1 The probability of different fatty acids in the molecular structure of the investigated vegetable oils [20]
SMD [μm]
250
n-Heptane
Table 2 Physical properties of the investigated fuels for SMD calculation 200
Palm
Fuel σ [N/m] μ*103 [kg/ms] ρ [kg/m3] LHV [MJ/kg] 150
Rapeseed
100
Ethanol 0.0227 1.2 789 26.8 RME
50
Soybean
n-Heptane 0.0209 0.414 684 44.6 0
0 0,25 0,5 0,75 1 Sunflower
Diesel 0.025 2.5 835 43 Atomizing gauge pressure [bar]
RME 0.0314 6.7 893 37.1 Fig. 3 SMD of different fuel types at various atomizing gauge pressures
Palm 0.0332 106 890 37 Having a low SMD does not necessarily results in complete
Rapeseed 0.0338 70 920 37
evaporation in the mixing tube. Volatility is also of importance,
which usually grows with the length of the carbon chain. The
Soybean 0.0338 60 920 37.8 temperature of combustion air was set to a constant value of
Sunflower 0.0337 49 919 37.8 700 K, also based on the previous measurement series [9,13].
Table 3 contains the atomization and evaporation character-
istics of the investigated fuels at 700 °C and atomization gauge
In practical devices, the combustion power demand is given pressure of 0.818 bar (critical pressure ratio, hence maximum
rather than the fuel flow rate. Consequently, SMD calculations investigated value), 0.333 bar (between the limits of the inves-
were carried out keeping 15 kW of firing power, which comes tigation by atomizing air exit velocity), and 0.053 bar (mini-
from the previous experimental studies [9,13]. mum investigated value). Hence, the SMD is fully determined
Evaporation of diesel oil and n-heptane droplets rely on the for each fuel type. The ratio of the heat-up period to the total
extensive data by Lefebvre [15]. The physical properties of etha- time of evaporation (thu+tst ) depends only on the material prop-
nol are also well-known. Therefore, the required data is gathered erties in this situation. Consequently, the lower values corre-
from high-quality web databases [27-30]. Typically, the required spond to the more volatile fuels. The residence time of a single
properties for evaporation as a function of the temperature of droplet is estimated as 5.39, 8.03, and 20.17 ms, respective to
the remaining fuels are quite rare in the literature according to the mentioned three atomization gauge pressures.
the best knowledge of the authors. Therefore, only rapeseed and Figure 4 shows the ratio of residence time and evaporation
soybean oil were investigated from evaporation point of view, time of diesel oil, ethanol, n-heptane, soybean oil, and rapeseed
using the following data [25,31-35] power law, and Arrhenius. oil in a logarithmic scale.