Abstract:
The objective of this study was to investigate the mechanism of soot formation in biodiesel
by analyzing the combustion of individual components. The paper presents a numerical analysis of the effect of preheat temperatures on nucleation rates, coagulation rates, and soot
volume fraction in methyl linolenate (MLe) co-flow flame. In this work, Moss-Brooke’s soot
model and a reduced kinetic mechanism containing 177 chemical species and 2904 chemical reactions were used to simulate the pyrolysis and combustion of MLe. A laminar jet
flame with inlet velocities of 0.4 m/s was studied. The preheat temperature of the fuel was
varied between 300 and 450 K. The burner walls were stationary and no-slip conditions were
applied. The pressure outlet had Neumann boundary conditions and the tangential velocity
was set to zero at the wall. It was established that an increase in fuel preheat temperatures
causes an increase in nucleation rates and the amount of soot due to accelerated fuel pyrolysis, improved diffusion, acceleration from buoyancy, and earlier formation of PAHs. It was
discovered that increasing the fuel preheat temperature had a greater impact on soot formation along the centerline than on the wing.
