Free Jet in Confined Combustion Chamber: Numerical Model for Industrial Application in Low NOx Burners

The present work is focused on the prediction of the fluid dynamics behaviour for natural gas burners characterized by low NO_x emissions. The fluid dynamics in the combustion chamber is investigated in order to look for the condition under which it is possible to obtain a diluted combustion. The experimental data used as reference come from two set of tests related to different isothermal flow behaviour: high Reynolds number (Re = 68000) and lower Reynolds number (Re = 5427). Many turbulence models are examined in order to validate high and low Reynolds case. The k-ω models implemented by Wilcox in 1998 seems to properly predict the fluid dynamics behaviour of the jet for high Reynolds numbers, while, for low Reynolds jets, a modification needs to be introduced. The numerical analysis for low Reynolds number, based on an unstructured 2D axial symmetrical grid, shows that no two-equation turbulence models fit the experimental data for low Reynolds jet. Based on the evidence that at low Reynolds number the hypothesis of homogeneous isotropic small turbulence eddy is not valid a modification of k-ω turbulence model’s closure constant has been proposed. This leads to a better agreement with the experimental data. The results demonstrate that great attention needs to be taken and invested in the identification of the turbulence models used in CFD and in the proper tunneling (of the closure coefficient for the turbulence model) that need to be computed case by case accordingly with the specific turbulence level and fluid dynamic features of the jet itself.