The Histogram of Pressure Oscillations Amplitudes, in Lean Premixed Combustions, Caused by Thermo-Acoustic Instabilities
Lean premixed combustion is widely used in recent years as a method to achieve the environmental standards with regard to NOx emission. In spite of the mentioned advantage, premixed combustion systems, with equivalence ratios less than one, are susceptible to the combustion instability. To study the lean combustion instability, by experiments, one premixed combustion setup, equipped with reactant supplying system, is designed and manufactured in Amirkabir University of Technology. In this research, gaseous propane is introduced as fuel and several experiments are performed at nearly atmospheric pressure, with equivalence ratios within the range of 0.7 to 1.5. In this experiments fuel mass flow rate is varied between 2 and 4 gr/s. Unstable operating condition has been observed in combustion chamber when equivalence ratio is less than one. To distinguish the combustion instability for various operating conditions, probability density functions, spectral diagrams, and space distribution of pressure oscillations, along with Rayleigh Criterion, are utilized. Accordingly, effect of equivalence ratio on stabilizing the unstable combustion system is investigated. Moreover, convective delay time is calculated for all experiments and the results are compared with Rayleigh Criterion. This comparison has shown good agreement the experimental results and Rayleigh Criterion. Finally, stability limits are identified based on inlet mass flow rate and equivalence ratio.