Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

A spray-suppression model for turbulent combustion

Conference ·
OSTI ID:751195

A spray-suppression model that captures the effects of liquid suppressant on a turbulent combusting flow is developed and applied to a turbulent diffusion flame with water spray suppression. The spray submodel is based on a stochastic separated flow approach that accounts for the transport and evaporation of liquid droplets. Flame extinguishment is accounted for by using a perfectly stirred reactor (PSR) submodel of turbulent combustion. PSR pre-calculations of flame extinction times are determined using CHEMKIN and are compared to local turbulent time scales of the flow to determine if local flame extinguishment has occurred. The PSR flame extinguishment and spray submodels are incorporated into Sandia's flow fire simulation code, VULCAN, and cases are run for the water spray suppression studies of McCaffrey for turbulent hydrogen-air jet diffusion flames. Predictions of flame temperature decrease and suppression efficiency are compared to experimental data as a function of water mass loading using three assumed values of drop sizes. The results show that the suppression efficiency is highly dependent on the initial droplet size for a given mass loading. A predicted optimal suppression efficiency was observed for the smallest class of droplets while the larger drops show increasing suppression efficiency with increasing mass loading for the range of mass loadings considered. Qualitative agreement to the experiment of suppression efficiency is encouraging, however quantitative agreement is limited due to the uncertainties in the boundary conditions of the experimental data for the water spray.

Research Organization:
Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (US); Sandia National Labs., Livermore, CA (US)
Sponsoring Organization:
US Department of Energy (US)
DOE Contract Number:
AC04-94AL85000
OSTI ID:
751195
Report Number(s):
SAND2000-0420C
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Numerical studies of dilute and dense spray characteristics
Conference · Tue Dec 31 23:00:00 EST 1991 · OSTI ID:5420572

Integrated approach to spray-combustion model development. Report for October 1985-October 1986
Technical Report · Sun Nov 30 23:00:00 EST 1986 · OSTI ID:6180951

Burning fuel sprays
Conference · Wed Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 1976 · Prepr., Div. Pet. Chem., Am. Chem. Soc.; (United States) · OSTI ID:7213408