Suppression of Cup-Burner Flames

Published

September 17, 2003

Author(s)

F Takahashi, Gregory T. Linteris, V Katta

Abstract

The unsteady suppression process of a laminar methane-air co-flow diffusion flame formed on a cup burner has been studied experimentally and numerically in normal earth gravity. The computation uses a time-dependent direct numerical simulation with detailed chemistry. A fire extinguishing agent (CO2 or CF3H) was introduced into a coflowing oxidizer stream by gradually replacing the air (the standard method) or the nitrogen in the air (the constant oxygen concentration method). The agent concentration required for extinguishment was constant over a wide range of the oxidizer velocity, showing a so-called plateau region. The measured extinguishing volume fractions of the agents were: CO2 replacing air, (15.9 0.6) %; CF3H replacing air, (11.7 0.8) %; CO2 replacing N2, (40.2 2.0) %; and CF3H replacing N2, (20.3 1.5) %. The cup-burner flame without agent flickered at 11 Hz or 15 Hz, depending on the oxidizer velocity. The flame base sometimes oscillated at half the flickering frequency just before the flame blew off. The suppression of cup-burner flames occurred via a blowoff process (in which the flame base drifts downstream) rather than the global extinction phenomenontypical of counterflow diffusion flames. The numerical simulations predicted the suppression limits and the flickering frequency with good agreements with the experimental observations and, more importantly, revealed the detailed mechanisms of the flame-base oscillation and subsequent blowoff phenomena.

Proceedings Title

Fourth International Symposium on Scale Modeling

Conference Dates

September 17-19, 2003

Conference Location

Undefined

Conference Title

International Symposium on Scale Modeling

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

diffusion flame, fire suppression, flame extinction, flame stabilization, flame structure, halon replacements

Citation

Takahashi, F. , Linteris, G. and Katta, V. (2003), Suppression of Cup-Burner Flames, Fourth International Symposium on Scale Modeling, Undefined, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=861253 (Accessed April 25, 2024)