Effects of pressure and preheating temperature on the laminar flame speed of methane/air and acetone/air mixtures

Laminar flame speeds of acetone/air mixtures have been investigated at elevated temperature and high pressure conditions in regards to the importance of this intermediate oxygenated molecule in hydrocarbon oxidation. Experiments were performed in an elevated pressure combustion vessel specifically designed around a concept of a premixed Bunsen flame. In a first step, measurements of the laminar flame speed of gaseous CH₄/air mixtures were performed with OH rad chemiluminescence and OH-PLIF methodologies and compared with literature data in order to validate the experimental setup. The effects of the preheating temperature (373–523 K), pressure (0.1–1.0 MPa) and equivalence ratio (0.6–1.3) on the laminar flame speed of acetone/air mixtures were then examined. The experiments were finally complemented and compared with numerical simulations conducted with Cosilab commercial software package using published detailed chemical kinetic mechanisms for proposing a correlation relationship of the acetone/air laminar flame speed with pressure, temperature and equivalence ratio.