Flickering Frequency and Pollutants Formation in Microwave Induced Diffusion Flames

The use of electromagnetic wave has been interested in various energy industry because it enhances a flame stability and provides higher safety environments. However it might increase the pollutant emissions such as NOx and soot, and have harmful influence on human and environments. Therefore, it is very important to understand interaction mechanism between flame and electromagnetic wave from environmental point of view. In this study, an experiment was performed with jet diffusion flames induced by electromagnetic wave. Microwave was used as representative electromagnetic wave and a flickering flame was introduced to simulate the more similar combustion condition to industry. The results show that the induced microwave enhances the flame stability and blowout limit. The unstable lifted flickering flames under low fuel/oxidizer velocity is changed to stable attached flames or lift-off flames when microwave applied to the flames, which results from the abundance of radical pool. However, NOx emission was increased monotonically with increasing the microwave power as microwave power increased up to 1.0 kW. The effects might be attributed to the heating of combustion field and thermal NOx mechanism will be prevailed. Soot particle was examined at the post flame region by TEM grid. The morphology of soot particle sampled in the microwave induced flames was similar to the incipient soot that is not agglomerated and contain a lots of liquid phase hydrocarbon such as PAH, which soot particle formed near reaction zone is oxidized on the extended yellow flame region and hence only unburned young particles are emitted on the post flame region.

마이크로파가 인가된 화염에서의 주파수 특성과 오염물질 생성