The Effect of Inlet Air Preheat on CO and NO Production in the Combustion of Diesel in Canister Burner

The main purpose of this paper is to study the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) prediction on the formation of carbon monoxide and oxide of nitrogen (CO-NO) inside the canister burner with inlet air pre-heating of 100 K and 250 K while varying the swirl angle of the radial swirler. Air swirler adds sufficient swirling to the inlet flow to generate central recirculation region (CRZ) which is necessary for flame stability and fuel air mixing enhancement. Therefore, designing an appropriate air swirler is a challenge to produce stable, efficient and low emission combustion with low pressure losses. A liquid fuel burner system with different radial air swirler with 280 mm inside diameter combustor of 1000 mm length was investigated. Analyses were carried out using four different radial air swirlers having 30°, 40°, 50° and 60° vane angles. The flow behavior was also investigated numerically using CFD solver Ansys Fluent. Overall results show that inlet air preheat quickens the completion of combustion such that the CO and NO production stabilized at a point nearer to fuel injection point, and reduced the CO and NO concentrations due to the combustion.