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THIRD EUROPEAN COMBUSTION MEETING ECM 2007

Correlation of Turbulent Burning Velocity and Turbulence Intensity for Starch Dust Air Mixtures
P. Hamberger1, H. Schneider, 1, D. Jamois 2, Ch. Proust 2
1

Fraunhofer Institut Chemische Technologie, Joseph-von-Fraunhoferstr. 7, 76327 Pfinztal, Germany 2 INERIS, Parc Technologique ALATA, PO box 2, 60550 Verneuil-en-Halatte, France

Abstract Currently dust explosion simulation codes are developed for assisting in a safe design of dust handling facilities. The correlation of turbulent burning velocity with turbulence intensity is important as an input into these codes. In laboratory scale experiments the open tube method was used to measure simultaneously both the turbulence intensity and the flame propagation. To simplify interpretation of the results, direct access to these values is of high significance. Therefore the flame velocity was measured in situ via visualization with a high speed camera while the turbulence intensity was measured during the whole combustion process until the flame arrived at the sensors, which consisted of modified pitot probes. The correlation was found to have the same trend as the the Bray - Glder model for gases in the investigated range of 0.5m/s < u < 3m/s with flame speeds of up to 3m/s. Introduction Improvement of plant safety is worldwide an important factor to protect humans, environment and expensive facilities. The intensity of dust explosions is traditionally characterized by parameters like KSt (product of maximum pressure rise and cubic root of reactor volume) and the maximum explosion pressure pmax, generally measured in spherical vessels. These values have the disadvantage to be based on restricted assumptions like spherical containers and flame propagations, central ignition point and thin flame fronts whereas a very important quantity like the aerodynamics of the dust mixture is not at all taken into account. In reality, turbulence is always present within dust air clouds and of great influence on burning velocities. Especially the correlation between the turbulence and the burning velocity of dust air mixtures is of importance as an input in numerical codes, which are currently developed to predict flame propagation and overpressures during explosions and thus should be able to assist in a safe design of dust handling industrial facilities. Objectives Difficulties in the derivation of burning velocity and turbulence intensity for dust explosions from closed vessel experiments are as follows: difficult direct measurement of flame speed or indirect determination of flame speed from pressure rise; measurement of turbulence intensity with hot wires or LDA, which is only applicable for non-reactive or very lean mixtures, respectively; the validity of these data are questionable for realistic, i.e. much higher dust concentrations, since the particles on their own may influence turbulence. In an attempt to overcome these problems, a new concept of experimental system has been devised and used to produce new data for moderate turbulence intensities in the range of 1.5m/s<u<3.5m/s [1, 2]. There was an interest in testing the method for lower intensities with

the intention to confirm theoretical interpretations. First attempts to do so were encouraging [3]. In the present paper a complete new set of data was produced in a range of 0.5m/s<u<3.0m/s. Experimental Method For the measurement of burning velocities as a function of turbulence intensity an apparatus according to the Open Tube method [4] was used (see Figure 1). In contrast to other techniques, this device gives the possibility to measure both the flame propagation and the turbulence intensity directly and in situ. It consists of a channel with a length of 1.8 m and (0.3 x 0.3) m cross section area, open at the bottom and closed on the top. The front side is made of transparent glas to have an optical access. Dust is dispersed via a sieve riddler system from above. As soon as the desired concentration is reached, turbulence is initiated via a gas flow originating from a pressurized gas reservoir through a system of small nozzles in four parallel tubes running in the corners of the apparatus. Jets emerging from the nozzles collide in the centre and particles are subsequently mixed and distributed thoroughly within the channel. A range of turbulence intensities between 0.5m/s and 3m/s can be adjusted by variation of the gas reservoir pressure. The dust air cloud is ignited with pyrotechnics (100 Joule) at the lower end of the device. The lower opening of the tube allows the reaction products to flow out unhindered. This way the flame, recorded with a high speed video camera, can propagate undisturbed to the top. Turbulence intensity is measured with modified Pitot tubes, which are in operation during the whole propagation process, and thus even at the moment when the flame passes the probe, intensity can be detected. In former tests this riddler mode has been already successfully tested [3] and the resulting data were compatible with the data obtained with so called injection mode, where the dust is contained within the pressurized gas reservoir and injected into the tube [1].

Corresponding author: helmut.schneider@ict.fraunhofer.de Proceedings of the European Combustion Meeting 2007

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In the riddler mode, the dust concentration was estimated from the measured feeding rate of dust (~100 g/s) and the measured velocity of the falling dust cloud (~2.2 m/s), which results in a concentration of about 500 g/m3.

Table 1: Starch dust properties

d(0.1) 1.66 m

d(0.5) 3.53 m

d(0.9)

Sauter Mean

6.73 m 2.91 m

Data Analysis Burning velocity The burning velocity S is defined as the velocity of the flame front relative to the surrounding unburnt medium. As a first assumption, recalling that the unburnt mixture is at rest because the burnt products are expelled out of the open end, S should be close to the flame velocity. It appears in fact [1,3], due to buoyancy forces presumably, the flame front is protubing slightly into the reactants. Data reduction [1] indicates that it looks much like a parabola. Because of this, data analysis is performed as follows. The flame propagation is filmed with a high speed camera (PHANTOM V5, 500 fps). In each frame, the flame front is fitted with a parabolod and its area A is calculated. The instantaneous flame speed, s, can be extracted from the trajectory of the filmed flame. If a is the cross section of the tube, the mass conservation laws reads [4]:
1 a S = s = s F A

A typical flame trajectory is shown in Figure 2. The evolution in time of the flame area factor, F, and of the flame speed is presented in Fig. 3

Figure 1: Open Tube

Dust For the present experiments, a potato starch dust has been used with a typical particle diameter of 3 m (Table 1).

Figure 2: Flame trajectory along the axis of the channel

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speed around its mean value and L is the space crosscorrelation distance [5] Measurement of those data has been performed with a modified pitot tube as described by Proust [2], based on a concept by McCaffrey and Heskestad [6]. These probes are robust against the experimental conditions since they can be used in the presence of both flame and dust. Turbulence intensities have been measured for several starting pressures (Figure 5):
Figure 3: Time evolution of s and F

After the initial flame development phase (up to 0.8 m in the tube i.e.. about 4,5 sec. after the beginning of the experiment), the flame trajectory is nearly linear indicating the flame is propagating in a steady state medium. The flame area factor F is about 1.3 with a tendency to increase with increasing the flame velocity. Some fluctuations in the flame trajectory may appear more or less clearly according to the experiments. Considering the flame speed (Fig. 3), it appears that these fluctuations are in phase with the variations of the flame area (Fig. 3) suggesting some acoustic interactions. The foregoing expression to derive S does not smooth out those oscillations (Fig. 4) indicating perhaps that the parabolod approximation is not accurate enough to track accurately the evolution of the flame front area. Nevertheless, it is estimated that S is known within a total accuracy of about 30%. Note that all the measurements are performed in a time scale of less than 0.5 sec. between 4.5 and 5 sec.

Figure 5: Determination of Turbulence Intensities

After the beginning of air injection it takes about 2 sec for the flow to establish throughout the tube. Then an exponential decrease takes place (Table 2). The higher the initial pressure the higher u. Note that during the flame propagation (between 4.5 and 5 sec.), u is not far from its maximum and does not vary significantly (10 %). Presence of dust is found not to have a significant influence on the trends (Figure 6). The integral scale of turbulence is between 3 and 5 cm [7].
Table 2: Turbulence Intensities for several starting pressures

Figure 4: Burning velocity vs. time

p0 [bar] 10 12,5 15 17,5 20 26 50

u [m/s] 1,029e-0,1447t 1,200e-0,1440t 1,372e-0,1431t 1,610e-0,1395t 1,919e-0,1304t 2,309e-0,1180t 4,233e-0,1294t

Turbulence intensity The turbulence of a flow is commonly described with the integral length scale L as a value describing the size of the largest eddies and with u the turbulence intensity featuring their recirculating speed. Practically, u is the root mean square of the fluctuations of the flow

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for which the burning mechanisms can be reasonably assumed to be close to those of premixed gases, the foregoing correlation has been implemented (Fig. 8) with SL = 0.2 m/s and = /(.Cp.SL) = 0.0001 m (, and Cp the thermal heat conductivity, the specific mass and specific heat for air). The experimental data are presented on Fig. 8 as for the evolution of ST versus u. The standard deviation for the turbulence intensity is about 9-12% and fluctuates around 16% for ST because of air humidity variations and agglomeration of the dust particles. The deviation grows at lower turbulence intensity: below u=0,5m/s measurements are not reproducible.
5,0

Figure 6: Comparison of turbulence trends with and without presence of dust (500 g/m3 of potato starch dust)
Burning velocity ST [m/s]

4,5 4,0

Bray correlation for gases L = 0,08 m and delta = 0,0001125 m

Bray correlation for 30 m particles

The intensity of turbulence at the moment of flame passage at the probes has been extracted for those data and is reported on Fig. 7 depending on the pressure in the reservoir.

3,5 3,0 2,5 2,0 1,5 1,0 0,5 0,0 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5

Bray correlation

ST = 0,2 + b*u'0,75 b 0.87569 0.02686

3,0

3,5

4,0

4,5

Turbulence intensity u' [m/s]

Figure 8: Turbulent burning velocity of Potato Dust

Figure 7: Calibration for turbulence intensity versus pressure

Results and Discussion Some results from fundamental research [8] indicates some probable similarities between gas and dust turbulent flame propagation. In particular, some models describing the correlation of burning velocity and turbulence intensity for gases may be used. In this paper, models originating from Bray [9] and Glder [10] are envisioned which could read [3]:
u' ST = 0,6 S SL L
0 , 75

0 , 25

+1

ST Turbulent burning speed SL Laminar burning speed u rms L Integral length scale Flame thickness

It should be recognized however that it is not fully known, if the basis for this model and for dust flames is identical. On the basis of previous measurements of the laminar burning velocities for the potato starch dust [3]

The experimental data follow roughly the correlation. The burning velocity rises with growing turbulence of the flow. The values are between ST=0,5m/s for u=0,5m/s and ST=2,5m/s for u=3m/s. The experimental results for potato dust are clearly below the theoretical values. This had been suggested previously [8] and need to be clarified by some fundamental work. Additionally plotted in Fig.8 is a dash pointed curve, which is the result of a consistent data set obtained by use of both, riddler and injection mode with 30 m potato dust particles [3]. This curve is also below the theoretical Bray Glder curve, but very surprisingly systematically higher than the new data. Normally, it should be expected that the smaller particles have higher burning velocities. However, it is known that particles smaller than about 10 m tend to strong agglomeration [11]. The measured free fall velocity of the particles of about 2 m/s in the channel corresponds to 300 m sized particles. This means that the average particle size was clearly higher compared with the measurements with 30 m particles because of agglomeration effects. The other idea, that a discrimination of particles according to their size occurs when dropping down the channel with the result of a much lower particle concencentration than 500 g/m3 of the small particles, followed by lower burning velocities, is not very probable, since according to [12,13] the dust cloud is falling in a bulky manner.

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Conclusion Analysis of the experimental results with the sieve/riddler system show, in agreement with former experiments with an injector system [1], a clear trend of the turbulent burning velocity to rise with growing turbulence intensity. Measured values range from ST=0,5m/s up to ST=2,5m/s for 0,5m/s<u<3m/s. The measured velocities follow qualitatively the BrayGlder model, but lie well below. It may be a problem to get meaningful results if particles smaller than about 10 m are used with this method.

Nomenclature A Surface of flame front a Projection of A on cross section of channel F a/A L Integral length scale s Flame speed Laminar burning velocity SL Turbulent burning velocity ST t Time u rms; root mean square velocity Flame thickness

[9] Bray K., Studies of turbulent burning velocities, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, vol. A431, pp. 315-325, 1990 [10] Glder .L., Turbulent premixed flame propagation models for different combustion regimes, Comptes-rendus du 22nd Symp (Int.) on Combustion, 1990 [11] Geldart, T., Gas fluidization technology, N.Y., John Wiley & Sons, 1986 [12] Hawkesley, P.G.W., The physics of particle size measurement, Part I: Fluid dynamics and the Stokes diameter, British Coal Utilisation Research Association Monthly Bulletin 15, (4), 105, 1951 [13] Brown, K.C., Ennenghigh, R.H., Dust explosions in factories: A new vertical tube test apparatus, Safety in mines, 1959

Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to Mr. L. Mathieu for helping into the achievement of this work.

References [1] Schneider H., Measurement of Turbulent Burning Velocities by Means of the Open Tube Method, Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 19, 130134, 2006 [2] Proust C., Formation, inflammation, combustion des atmospheres explosives (ATEX) et effets associs, Doctorat of science dissertation, Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine, Nancy, France, 2004 [3] Schneider H., Proust C., Determination of Turbulent Burning Velocities of Dust Air Mixtures with the Open Tube Method, 6th International Symposium on Hazards, Prevention and Mitigation of Industrial Explosions (ISHPMIE), Halifax, Canada, 2006 [4] Andrews G.E., Bradley D., Determination of burning velocities: a critical review, Combustion and Flame 18, 1972 [5] Hinze J.O. (1975). Turbulence, 2nd edition, Mc Graw-Hill company, New-York, ISBN 0-07-029037-7 [6] McCaffrey B. J., Heskestad G., A Robust Bidirectional Low Velocity Probe for Flame and Fire Application, Combustion and Flame Vol. 26, 125, 1976 [7] Schneider H., Proust C., Laminar and Turbulent Burning Velocities of Dust Clouds, International ESMG Symposium on Process Safety and Industrial Explosion Protection, Nrnberg, Germany, 2005 [8] Proust C., A few fundamental aspects about ignition and flame propagation in dust clouds, J. Loss Prev. Process Ind., vol. 19, 2006