Modified multipurpose reduced chemistry for ethanol combustion

We present in this short communication a modification to our previous ethanol reduced combustion chemistry (Millán-Merino, 2018) that eliminates nonphysical values of the species concentrations which we discovered in applying the mechanism to the combustion of an isolated ethanol droplet. This unsteady test is reported here to check the multipurpose character of the reduced mechanism for a problem that combines non-homogeneous autoignition, rich and lean premixed-flame propagation, and the development of a diffusion flame, as well as a the presence of a cold moving boundary at the droplet surface. During the computations, production and consumption rates of the alfa-hydroxyethyl (CH3CHOH) intermediary radical became unbalanced, invalidating its steady-state hypothesis, which was used during the derivation of the reduced scheme. This difficulty is removed here by taking CH3CHOH out of steady state, thereby augmenting slightly the reduced mechanism. This work was supported by the project ENE2015-65852-C2-1-R (MINECO/FEDER,UE).