Laminar Flame Speed Measurements of Synthetic Gas Blends With Hydrocarbon Impurities

New Laminar Flame Speed measurements have been taken for a wide range of syngas mixtures containing hydrocarbon impurities. These experiments began with two baseline syngas mixtures. The first of these baseline mixtures was a bio-syngas with a 50/50 H2/CO split, and the second baseline mixture was a coal syngas with a 40/60 H2/CO split. Experiments were conducted over a range of equivalence ratios from ϕ = 0.5 to 3 at initial conditions of 1 atm and 300 K. Upon completion of the baseline experiments, two different hydrocarbons were added to the fuel mixtures at levels ranging from 0.8 to 15% by volume, keeping the H2/CO ratio locked for the bio-syngas and coal syngas mixtures. The addition of these light hydrocarbons, namely CH4 and C2H6, had been shown in recent calculations by the authors to have significant impacts on the laminar flame speed, and the present experiments validated the suspected trends. For example, a 7% addition of methane to the coal-syngas blend decreased the peak flame speed by about 25% and shifted it from ϕ = 2.2 to a leaner value near ϕ = 1.5. Also, the addition of ethane at 1.7% reduced the mixture flame speed more than a similar addition of methane (1.6%). In general, the authors’ chemical kinetic model over predicted the laminar flame speed by about 10–20% for the mixtures containing the hydrocarbons. The decrease in laminar flame speed with the addition of the hydrocarbons can be explained by the increased importance of the inhibiting reaction CH3 + H (+M) ↔ CH4 (+M), which also explains the enhanced effect of C2H6 compared to CH4, where the former produces more CH3 radicals, particularly at fuel rich conditions.