Particulate formation in reacting flows
TEM image of a typical aircraft combustor soot aggregate. (a) aggregate and (b) detail of the surface. Adapted from Popovitcheva et al. (2000)
Increasing concerns about the health hazards and climate-changing potential posed by soot will soon result in stricter regulations on smoke visibility and size of soot particles from combustion devices, such as aircraft and automotive diesel engines. The design efforts for the next generation of low-soot jet combustors and diesel engines will greatly benefit from improved soot models, which allow for a priori predictions of soot mass fraction, as well as soot particle size distribution. Presently, existing soot models are based on empirical correlations and they are not predictive in nature. While the existing body of data has been invaluable in aiding our understanding of the basics of soot formation, the conclusions drawn from simplified simulation conditions can hardly be extrapolated to real, combustor-like setups, in which turbulence plays a key role.
The Reactive Flow Modeling Laboratory at KAUST is involved in the development of computationally affordable models for particulate formation in turbulent non-premixed flames to be incorporated in the framework of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) in complex combustion devices.