In recently developed ammonia combustion technologies such as swirl flow and staged combustion, locally rich or lean pockets of unburned mixtures may occur due to insufficient mixing. This results in a premixed flamelet propagating into a gradually leaner or richer mixture. The present study aims to numerically investigate the propagation of laminar ammonia/air premixed flames in compositionally stratified mixtures. Results indicate that the flame speed in a rich-to-lean stratified mixture is increased from that in corresponding homogeneous mixtures at each local equivalence ratio. In contrast, the stratified flame speed is decreased in a lean-to-rich stratified mixture. The response of the stratified flame speed is attributed to variation in the amount of H 2 in the burned gas. In the rich-to-lean stratified flame, an extra amount of H 2 diffuses into the reaction zone to enhance chain-branching reactions which produce H radicals. The increased H radicals then promote dehydration reactions, resulting in an increased fuel consumption rate. In the lean-to-rich stratified flame, the opposite process takes place. The above mechanism is similar to the so-called back-support effect observed in methane/air stratified flames. Meanwhile, in both rich-to-lean and lean-to-rich stratified flames, additional NO reduction occurs in the stoichiometric region of the burned gas. This is facilitated by unburned ammonia diffusing from the neighboring rich burned gas mixing with O / H radicals diffusing from the neighboring lean burned gas, resulting in a production of extra N H i radicals which readily reduce NO . Therefore, NO emission in stratified flames is expected to be lower than that estimated from the emission characteristics in homogeneous mixtures. Although similar to the well-known thermal DeNOx mechanism, the current NO reduction process occurs under a much higher temperature due to the abundance of radical species. A similar phenomenon is expected to be observed in a triple flame configuration, which requires future investigations. (c) 2022 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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