Keywords

Methane, Combustion, Hydrogen, Kinetics, Modeling

Abstract

Methane slip is a prominent issue in natural gas reciprocating engines that are used in transportation and marine applications. The incomplete combustion that results in methane slip can be resolved with the introduction of hydrogen within the combustion mixture to improve methane oxidation and further enable combustion within the engine crevices where methane has previously remained unreacted. Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) is a common method used to produce hydrogen and can be used to design an onboard device to reduce methane slip from reciprocating engines. The development of this reformer device requires the validation of high-fidelity chemical kinetic mechanisms at the low temperatures of the crevice volumes of these engines. In this work, autoignition data are obtained using a shock tube at lean (phi = 0.714) and stoichiometric (phi = 1) equivalence ratios spanning a temperature range of 1042 K – 1234 K at the 80-bar operating pressure of the test engine. Blends of methane, hydrogen, and reformate products from the SMR reaction are shock-heated in synthetic air, with the ignition delay time measured using an OH* chemiluminescence detector at 310 nm and a CH* detector at 430 nm. The experimental results are compared to several state-of-the-art chemical kinetic mechanisms from the literature. In general, most of the mechanisms show very good agreement with experiments at higher temperatures, with simulation results showing little deviation from experiments at lower temperatures. A sensitivity analysis was conducted, and the results reveal that the methyl peroxy radical reaction H2+CH3O2 = H+CH3O2H has a very significant role in determining low-temperature IDTs of SMR mixtures. These findings provide valuable insights into the chemical kinetics governing methane reformate combustion and contribute to the optimization of onboard reformer designs aimed at mitigating methane slip in natural gas-fueled engines.

Completion Date

2025

Semester

Fall

Committee Chair

Subith Vasu Sumathi

Degree

Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering (M.S.A.E.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Format

PDF

Identifier

DP0029729

Document Type

Thesis

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

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