Liquid-phase temperature in the SpraySyn flame measured by two-color laser-induced fluorescence thermometry and simulated by LES

In the SpraySyn burner (Schneider et al., 2019) a solution of metal salts in a combustible liquid is atomized in a two-fluid nozzle with molecular oxygen as dispersion gas to generate oxide nanoparticles via combustion synthesis. The flame is anchored by a methane (CH4)/oxygen (O2) premixed flat flame stabilized on a porous plate surrounding the spray nozzle. This burner features a standardized design with simple geometry, which provides well-defined boundary conditions for the simulation to support model development and the interaction between experiment and simulation. In this work, two-color laser-induced fluorescence (2cLIF) thermometry based on the fluorescence tracer coumarin 152 dissolved in ethanol is applied to provide temporally averaged but spatially resolved liquid-phase temperature maps. The operating conditions for the spray formation were modified by varying the injection rate and the dispersion gas flow. Liquid-phase temperatures were predicted by large-eddy simulation (LES), where the spray is modeled by a Eulerian-Lagrangian approach based on measured liquid droplet properties (initial liquid-phase temperature, droplet size, and velocity distribution). Droplet size and velocity were measured by phase-Doppler anemometry (PDA). Gas-phase turbulent combustion is modeled with the flamelet-generated manifold (FGM) approach. Droplet temperature distributions were provided by the simulation to assess the systematic measurement error caused by LIF-signal averaging. Experimental and simulated average liquid-phase temperature maps are compared. The simulation results were found to be in good agreement with the experiment by showing a suitable prediction of the droplet heat-up process within the experimentally probed spray region.