Chemiluminesce
nce
emission from flames
ha
s
been implemented to monitor and control heat release rate
(HRR)
, local equivalence ratio
(ER)
and
key
pollutant emissions
in
gas turbine c
ombustors and automotive engines.
In the present study, in order t
o simultaneously simulate the chemiluminescence of OH
*
, CH
*
(A), C
2
*
and CO
2
*
(where
*
denotes the excited state) and
to obtain insight
on the relation between chemiluminescence, heat release
,
equivalence ratio and NO
emission
,
numerical studies on 1
-
D counterflow premixed methane flames were
conducted. A new detailed reaction mechanism, incorporating sub
-
reaction models
for excited state OH
*
, CH
*
(A),
C
2
*
and CO
2
*
radicals was
assembled
in thi
s study.
T
hree
detailed reaction mechanisms
available in the literature
for
C1
–
C3 hydrocarbons
were
employed in the current work. Results show that
OH
*
, CH
*
(A) and CO
2
*
chemiluminescence
can
accurately
reproduce
the heat
release rate
trend
, while t
he OH
*
/C
H
*
(A) chemi
luminescent
intensity ratio var
ies
non
-
monotonically with the equivalence ratio
.
Further,
it is shown that
t
he CO
2
*
and C
2
*
chemiluminescence can be utilized to indicate the
levels of
NO emissions.
However, the choice of the
fuel oxidant
chemica
l
mechanism can highly influence the
model’s ability to predict the behavior of the aforementioned
combustion
parameters
through
chemiluminescence
simulations.