A multipurpose reduced chemical-kinetic mechanism for methanol combustion

Abstract

A multipurpose reduced chemical-kinetic mechanism for methanol combustion comprising 8 overall reactions and 11 reacting chemical species is presented. The development starts by investigating the minimum set of elementary reactions needed to describe methanol combustion with reasonable accuracy over a range of conditions of temperature, pressure, and composition of interest in combustion. Starting from a 27-step mechanism that has been previously tested and found to give accurate predictions of ignition processes for these conditions, it is determined that the addition of 11 elementary reactions taken from its basis (San Diego) mechanism extends the validity of the description to premixed-flame propagation, strain-induced extinction of non-premixed flames, and equilibrium composition and temperatures, giving results that compare favourably with experimental measurements and also with computations using the 247-step detailed San Diego mechanism involving 50 reactive species. Specifically, premixed-flame propagation velocities and extinction strain rates for non-premixed counterflow flames calculated with the 38-step mechanism show departures from experimental measurements and detailed-chemistry computations that are roughly on the order of 10%, comparable with expected experimental uncertainties. Similar accuracy is found in comparisons of autoignition times over the range considered, except at very high temperatures, under which conditions the computations tend to overpredict induction times for all of the chemistry descriptions tested. From this 38-step mechanism, the simplification is continued by introducing steady-state approximations for the intermediate species CH3, CH4, HCO, CH3O, CH2OH, and O, leading to an 8-step reduced mechanism that provides satisfactory accuracy for all conditions tested.