Combustion and radiation characteristics of oxygen-enhanced inverse diffusion flame

The characteristics of combustion and radiation heat transfer of an oxygen-enhanced diffusion flame was experimentally analyzed. An infrared radiation heat flux gauge was used to measure the thermal radiation of various types of flames with fuel, air and pure oxygen. And the Laser Induced Incandescence (LII) technique was applied to characterize the soot concentrations which mainly contribute to the continuum radiation from flame. The results show that an oxygen-enhanced inverse diffusion flame is very effective in increasing the thermal radiation compared to normal oxygen diffusion flame. This seems to be caused by overlapped heat release rate of double flame sheets formed in inverse flame and generation of higher intermediate soot in fuel rich zone of oxygen-fuel interface, which is desirable to increase continuum radiation. And the oxygen/methane reaction at slight fuel rich condition (phi=2) in oxygen-enhanced inverse flame was found to be more effective to generate the soot with moderate oxygen availability.