A simplified chemical-kinetic cool-flame mechanism for n-alkanes has recently been developed and applied to the description of quasi-steady droplet combustion. Chemistry of this same general type can support premixed laminar cool-flame deflagrations. The present contribution derives the structure of the associated freely propagating cool premixed flame controlled by the low-temperature chemistry and develops formulas for calculating the corresponding laminar burning velocity. Application of activation-energy asymptotics reveals finite-rate chemistry, among essential intermediates (with concentrations so small that associated heat release is negligible), occurring throughout the preheat zone. There is leakage of both fuel and oxygen through the thin heat-release zone, with zones of consumption of an intermediate species on each side of the heat-release zone, thicker than that zone but still thin compared with the preheat-zone thickness. Predicted laminar burning velocities are compared with recently reported measurements for n-dodecane, performed in a newly designed high-pressure droplet ignition apparatus, resulting in reasonable agreement after account is taken of the process of insertion of the droplet into the furnace and of the velocity of the buoyant plume present in the experiment.

This work investigates the effects of ambient pressure on radiative heat losses in hot, warm, and cool microgravity spherical diffusion flames using a numerical model and compares the results to observations from microgravity experiments. The experimental data was obtained during droplet combustion experiments, and the numerical model simulates burner-supported flames. The similarities in the gas phase between the two configurations allow these simulations to provide accurate insights into the experimental results. The model uses a statistical narrow-band model that includes emission and reabsorption. The effect as pressure was varied between 0.5 and 10 atm on the relative radiation contributions from CO2 and H2O, the primary radiating species, was examined. As the pressure increased H2O contributed more to radiative loss than CO2 in both the experiments and computations. This was determined to be caused by increased absorption coefficients leading to increased reabsorption at higher pressures. Calculations performed without reabsorption did not see this effect, confirming it is due to the optically thick nature of the system. Reabsorption was higher for CO2 due to the prominence of the absorption band at 4.3 & micro;m, which became saturated at higher pressures. These results demonstrated the importance of using the optically thick assumption to accurately account for radiative losses in these flames, which are crucial to capture flame behaviours such as radiative extinction and reignitions.

This paper summarizes the first results from isolated droplet combustion experiments performed on the International Space Station (ISS). The long durations of microgravity provided in the ISS enable the measurement of droplet and flame histories over an unprecedented range of conditions. The first experiments were with heptane and methanol as fuels, initial droplet droplet diameters between 1.5 and 5.0 m m , ambient oxygen mole fractions between 0.1 and 0.4, ambient pressures between 0.7 and 3.0 a t m and ambient environments containing oxygen and nitrogen diluted with both carbon dioxide and helium. The experiments show both radiative and diffusive extinction. For both fuels, the flames exhibited pre-extinction flame oscillations during radiative extinction with a frequency of approximately 1 H z . The results revealed that as the ambient oxygen mole fraction was reduced, the diffusive-extinction droplet diameter increased and the radiative-extinction droplet diameter decreased. In between these two limiting extinction conditions, quasi-steady combustion was observed. Another important measurement that is related to spacecraft fire safety is the limiting oxygen index (LOI), the oxygen concentration below which quasi-steady combustion cannot be supported. This is also the ambient oxygen mole fraction for which the radiative and diffusive extinction diameters become equal. For oxygen/nitrogen mixtures, the LOI is 0.12 and 0.15 for methanol and heptane, respectively. The LOI increases to approximately 0.14 (0.14 O 2 /0.56 N 2 /0.30 C O 2 ) and 0.17 (0.17 O 2 /0.63 N 2 /0.20 C O 2 ) for methanol and heptane, respectively, for ambient environments that simulated dispersing an inert-gas suppressant (carbon dioxide) into a nominally air (1.0 a t m ) ambient environment. The LOI is approximately 0.14 and 0.15 for methanol and heptane, respectively, when helium is dispersed into air at 1 atm. The experiments also showed unique burning behavior for large heptane droplets. After the visible hot flame radiatively extinguished around a large heptane droplet, the droplet continued to burn with a cool flame. This phenomena was observed repeatably over a wide range of ambient conditions. These cool flames were invisible to the experiment imaging system but their behavior was inferred by the sustained quasi-steady burning after visible flame extinction. Verification of this new burning regime was established by both theoretical and numerical analysis of the experimental results. These innovative experiments have provided a wealth of new data for improving the understanding of droplet combustion and related aspects of fire safety, as well as offering important measurements that can be used to test sophisticated evolving computational models and theories of droplet combustion.

Two-stage autoignition of n-dodecane droplets with varying ambient oxygen concentrations in oxygen-nitrogen mixtures are investigated experimentally under microgravity conditions using high-speed shadowgraphy. The ambient pressure and temperature are held constant at 3 atm and 650 K, respectively, while the droplet initial diameter is fixed approximately at 1.2 mm. During the two-stage autoignition process, first a cool-flame front forms in the leaner regions farther away from the evaporating droplet, and it then propagates toward the fuel-rich region closer to the droplet surface, eventually encompassing the droplet. A hot-flame kernel is then initiated in the wake of the cool flame and very quickly expands, establishing a classical diffusion flame around the droplet. The first and second ignition delay times are measured from shadowgraphic images captured at 3000 frames per second. The first induction time is found to be insensitive to the ambient oxygen concentration, while the second induction time varies approximately as the negative 2 power of the oxygen mole fraction.

An improved understanding of cool diffusion flames could lead to improved engines. These flames are investigated here using a spherical porous burner with gaseous fuels in the microgravity environment of the International Space Station. Normal and inverse flames burning ethane, propane, and n-butane were explored with various fuel and oxygen concentrations, pressures, and flow rates. The diagnostics included an intensified video camera, radiometers, and thermocouples. Spherical cool diffusion flames burning gases were observed for the first time. However, these cool flames were not readily produced and were only obtained for normal n-butane flames at 2 bar with an ambient oxygen mole fraction of 0.39. The hot flames that spawned the cool flames were 2.6 times as large. An analytical model is presented that combines previous models for steady droplet burning and the partial-burning regime for cool diffusion flames. The results identify the importance of burner temperature on the behavior of these cool flames. They also indicate that the observed cool flames reside in rich regions near a mixture fraction of 0.53. & COPY; 2022 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This research conducted microgravity experiments to investigate phenomena appearing around a droplet existing outside the flame-spread limit. n-Decane droplets are tethered at intersections of SiC fibers. The flame spreads to two- or three-interactive droplets to heat a droplet placed outside the flame-spread limit of the interactive droplets. The cool-flame appearance during the flame spread over droplets was detected using different methods. The droplet diameter was measured with a back illumination to evaluate the vaporization-rate constant and to judge whether the cool flame appears or not. The temperature around the droplet was measured by the thin-filament pyrometry using a near-infrared camera to detect the temperature rise due to cool-flame appearance. The infrared radiation distribution from the combustion products was measured using a mid-wave infrared camera to judge the cool-flame appearance. The results show that a cool flame appears around the droplet existing outside the hot-flame-spread limit and the vaporization completes with the cool flame if the heat input from the hot flame is sufficiently large. This type of flame spread is called hot-to-cool flame spread. The definition of flame spread should be extended considering the cool flame.

Fire is a very serious threat in any confined volume but particularly so when a crew is confined in a spacecraft far from Earth, where there is little or no possibility of receiving aid or being rescued. Therefore, every measure must be taken to prevent a fire from happening. Even with material controls and other fire prevention measures, fire detection, suppression, and clean-up systems must be provided on spacecraft to allow the crew to respond to a fire. Unlike flames in normal gravity, fires in low gravity are not supported by the strong pumping of oxidizer and fuel into the flame zone and the subsequent pumping of the reactants out of the reaction zone. The lack of buoyancy allows a flame to propagate at lower air velocities than on Earth that changes the transport of oxygen into the flame, heat transfer to the fuel surface, and transport of heat out of the reaction zone. Under these conditions, the flame spread can occur at conditions and with characteristics that are not duplicated readily in normal gravity because of the large buoyant flows generated by the flame. Differences in flame characteristics also impact requirements for fire detection and suppression of spacecraft fires. Of course, any fire response protocol must be compatible with the other spacecraft systems such as the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS).

Experimental observations of two-stage autoignition dynamics of fiber-supported normal dodecane droplets in air under normal gravity are presented for a range of pressures and temperatures. High-speed shadowgraph imaging of the autoignition process reveals cool-flame and hot-flame front-formation and propagation dynamics. During two-stage ignition, a cool-flame kernel is first formed below the droplet; it then propagates toward the droplet along the fuel-vapor plume, and subsequently a hot-flame kernel is established behind the cool-flame front which rapidly expands, engulfing the droplet and establishing the classical diffusion flame. Results for the cool-flame and hot-flame kernel locations and their propagation speeds are presented for a range of ambient pressures, varying between normal atmospheric pressure and super-critical pressures and temperatures.

The first combustion experiments aboard the Japanese Experiment Module “Kibo” on the International Space Station, titled “Elucidation of Flame Spread and Group Combustion Excitation Mechanism of Randomly Distributed Droplet Clouds (Group Combustion)” were conducted in 2017 in order to bridge the gap between droplet combustion and spray combustion through flame spread over droplet arrays, droplet-cloud elements and randomly distributed droplet clouds. n-Decane droplets were distributed randomly on a SiC-fiber lattice, and the flame spread and group-combustion excitation were observed. During the flame spread near the group-combustion-excitation limit, two types of anomalous behavior appeared: large-scale ignition and re-burning by a slow flame propagation in a burned area. We successfully simulated similar phenomena by a flame-spread experiment using droplet-cluster arrays. The large-scale ignition phenomenon is caused by the ignition of a flammable mixture generated by heating multiple droplets existing outside the local flame-spread limit. The re-burning phenomenon by the slow flame propagation in a burned area is caused by the ignition of a flammable mixture diluted by the combustion products after the radiative extinction of the group flame. There is the possibility of a cool-flame appearance in both phenomena.

Droplet combustion experiments carried out in the International Space Station using n-alkane fuels have shown that large droplets, when ignited, first burn with visible hot flames and then extinguish, only to be followed later by quasi-steady cool-flame combustion. In a few of these experiments, some of the nitrogen in the nitrogen-oxygen ambient-gas mixture was replaced by helium, carbon dioxide, or xenon, for n-heptane, n-octane, n-decane, or n-dodecane droplets. Different diluents were observed to exert remarkably different influences on the cool-flame combustion. These initially unexpected differences are summarized here, with explanations offered for their causes. In particular, a simplified theoretical description of cool-flame-supported droplet combustion is employed to predict burning-rate constants and droplet diameters at cool-flame extinction, resulting in good agreement with much of the experimental data but disagreement with certain measurements, for reasons that are explained. The comparisons underscore the important influence of the diluent, especially on the Lewis numbers of cool-flame intermediate species derived from the fuel vapor.

A scaling analysis of burner-supported spherical-diffusion-flame extinction brought about by radiative heat loss is presented. The results are compared against earlier microgravity experimental data and unsteady numerical computations with detailed chemistry available in the literature, for normal and inverse flames. The flame diameter at extinction is shown to correlate well with the present model, in which the extinction radius scales with one-third power of gas flow rate times reactant mass fraction divided by the Planck-mean absorption coefficient.

An accidental fire involving the Lithium-Ion (Li-ion) battery in a laptop computer is one of the most likely fire scenarios on-board a spacecraft. These fires can occur from a defect in the battery that worsens with time, over-charging the battery and leading to failure or accidental damage caused by thermal runaway. While this is a relatively likely fire scenario, very little is known about the how a laptop computer fire would impact a sealed spacecraft. The heat release would likely cause a pressure rise, possibly exceeding the pressure limit of the vehicle and causing a relief valve to open. The combustion products from the fire could pose a short-term and long-term health hazard to the crew and the fire itself could cause injury to the crew and damage to the spacecraft. Despite the hazard posed by a laptop fire, there is little quantitative data on the fire size, heat release and toxic product formation. This paper presents the results of initial attempts to quantify the fire resulting from a failed laptop fire tested at the NASA White Sands Test Facility (WSTF). The data from the testing is useful to attempt to determine the fire size and characteristics such as maximum heat release rate, total heat release, maximum temperatures and fire duration are determined. Using existing models and correlations for fires, the measured fire characteristics are extrapolated to laptop fires on a vehicle the approximate size of the Orion spacecraft.

Millimeter-size fuel droplets burning in microgravity show substantial thermal expansion at earlier times in their burning history. Here, we develop a simple model that accounts for thermal expansion of the liquid fuel and compare it against experimental measurements. The results show that excellent agreement with measured droplet-diameter histories throughout the hot-flame period of combustion is obtained when the effect of thermal expansion is included.

Experimental observations are presented concerning radiative extinction of large n-alkane droplets in diluent-substituted environments at moderately varied pressures in microgravity onboard the International Space Station. The fuels considered are n-heptane, n-octane, and n-decane with carbon dioxide, helium, and xenon used as inerts, replacing nitrogen as diluents at varying amounts. It is shown that a simple scaling analysis, based on the assumptions that radiative extinction occurs when the flame temperature drops to a critical value and that the radiative heat loss rate is a fraction of the heat-release rate at the flame, is able to correlate the measured droplet diameter at extinction as a function of its initial diameter and of the ambient gas-mixture properties.

Droplet combustion experiments carried out onboard the International Space Station, using pure fuels and fuel mixtures, have shown that quasi-steady burning can be sustained by a non-traditional flame configuration, namely a “cool flame” burning in the “partial-burning” regime where both fuel and oxygen leak through the low-temperature-controlled flame-sheet. Recent experiments involving large, bi-component fuel (n-decane and hexanol, 50/50 by volume) droplets at elevated pressures show that the visible, hot flame becomes extremely weak while the burning rate remains relatively high, suggesting the possible simultaneous presence of “cool” and “hot” flames of roughly equal importance. The radiant output from these bi-component droplets is relatively high and cannot be accounted for only by the presence of a visible hot flame. In this analysis we explore the theoretical possibility of a dual-flame structure, where one flame lies close to the droplet surface, called the “cool flame”, and the other farther away from the droplet surface, termed the “hot flame”. A Burke-Schumann analysis of this dual structure seems to indicate that such flame structures are possible over a limited range of initial conditions. These theoretical results can be compared against available experimental data for pure and bi-component fuel droplet combustion to test how realistic the model may be.

This article presents the results of experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station involving the combustion of large bi-component droplets of decane and hexanol (50/50 by volume) in air ambients with ambient pressures between 0.05 and 0.30 MPa. The experiments showed the presence of sustained low-temperature or cool-flame burning following radiative extinction of large droplets at ambient pressures greater than or equal to 0.10 MPa. The droplet diameters at cool-flame extinction were larger for the decane/hexanol droplets than for pure decane droplets at atmospheric pressure, suggesting that hexanol inhibits the cool-flame burning. At 0.20 MPa large fiber-supported droplets radiatively extinguished then burned with a cool flame for a period of time before the hot flame spontaneously re-ignited. At the highest ambient pressure of approximately 0.30 MPa the droplets again radiatively extinguished and burned with a cool flame. Contrary to the 0.20 MPa tests, however, the hot flame did not spontaneously re-ignite, but the droplet burned to completion with a cool flame. Further, more detailed analyses of all camera and radiometer data suggest that the cool-flame burning at 0.30 MPa is fundamentally different than the cool-flame burning at atmospheric pressure. This result does not appear to be consistent with expectations based on currently available cool-flame chemical kinetics and may suggest the need for a different chemical-kinetic mechanism.

A simplified model for droplet combustion in the partial-burning regime is applied to the cool-flame regime observed in droplet-burning experiments performed in the International Space Station with normal-alkanes fuels resulting in expressions for the quasi-steady droplet burning rate and for the flame standoff ratio. The simplified predictions are found to produce reasonable agreement with the experimentally measured values of burning-rate constants but not with their apparent dependencies on pressure or on the initial droplet diameter. Good agreement is found, however, with newly measured and numerically calculated flame standoff ratios in this droplet combustion supported by cool flames.

A recent set of experiments carried out onboard the International Space Station (ISS) have shown that large n-alkane droplets, after the radiative extinction of the visible flame, can burn quasi-steadily in a low-temperature regime, up to a diffusive extinction accompanied by the formation of a vapor cloud. The experiments have also demonstrated that small droplets are unable to exhibit radiative extinction, but instead burn to completion or disruptively extinguish.In this work, we applied a mathematical model able to reproduce the experimental data in terms of vaporization rates, standoff ratios, extinction diameters. A detailed kinetic mechanism (with ∼450 species and ∼17,000 reactions) was taken into account, in order to correctly reproduce the low-temperature combustion regime. The role of several parameters (initial diameter of the droplet, composition of the gaseous environment, and pressure) on the extinction of the hot-temperature flames was numerically investigated. Predictions are found in good agreement with experimental measurements, showing that only droplets with an initial diameter larger than a critical diameter undergo radiative extinction. A linear relationship between the squared critical diameter and the molar fraction of oxygen in the atmosphere was found and demonstrated on the basis of scaling arguments.

Flame spread in fuel spray near the flame base and subsequent excitation of group combustion of the whole spray are necessary for stable combustion of continuous burning of liquid fuel such as in aero engines or gas turbines. In order to elucidate the flame spread mechanism, flame spread experiments of a fuel-droplet array in microgravity have been undertaken. Based on the past short-duration microgravity experiments and a percolation model to describe group combustion excitation of randomly distributed droplet clouds, the droplet cloud combustion experiment named "Group Combustion" is planned as the first combustion experiment in the Japanese Experiment Module "KIBO" on the International Space Station. The objective of this experiment is to verify the flame spread hypotheses regarding the effects of droplet interaction, droplet motion, and radiative heat loss from the flame. The Group Combustion Experiment Module (GCEM) has been developed as experiment-dedicated apparatus. This paper will provide an overview of the experiment.