Trajectories of evaporating droplets in a turbulent combustor using the one-dimensional turbulence model

Abstract

In the incineration of liquid hazardous wastes there exist "rogue" droplets (>300 μm diameter) which penetrate past the flame zone and burn as isolated droplets in the postflame gasses. Detailed knowledge of the droplet burnout points are essential to keeping the destruction removal efficiency in excess of the 99.99% required. The spread in trajectory endpoints of individual evaporating droplet streams injected into a turbulent combustor was investigated numerically. Results are in good agreement with the measurements. Correlation between the spread in the burnout points and initial droplet size, initial droplet velocity, interdroplet spacing, and droplet injection angle were investigated. The numerical investigation utilizes the novel One Dimensional Turbulence (ODT) {Kerstein (1999)} for the time developing fluid velocity and temperature fields with a new two phase flow model for predicting particle trajectories. The droplet heating/burning model used by Mulholland et al. (1991) is modified for application to this thesis.