ANALYSIS OF DETAILED KINETIC SCHEMES FOR COMBUSTION PROCESSES - APPLICATION TO A METHANE-ETHANE MIXTURE

The combustion kinetics of equimolar ethane-methane mixtures have been investigated in a perfectly jet stirred reactor in the temperature ra nge 923-1,080 K and for normalized fuel/O-2 stoichiometric ratios of 0 .24-1.5. The concentrations of the main molecular species have been me asured by probe sampling and GC analysis. The experimental data have b een compared with the model predictions of four detailed kinetic mecha nisms previously reported in the literature. A simple procedure to ext ract the most important reactions from a detailed kinetic scheme has a lso been developed. With this procedure a reduced model has been ident ified which is able to reproduce the behavior of the original detailed model in the entire range of operating conditions investigated in the experimental part of this work. A good reduction in the number of rea ctions has been obtained, while the number of involved chemical specie s has been only slightly reduced.