Emulsion Droplet Combustion in Microgravity: Water/Heptane Emulsions
This presentation reviews a series of experiments to further examine parametric effects on sooting processes of droplet flames in microgravity. The particular focus is on a fuel droplet emulsified with water, specifically emulsions of n-heptane as the fuel-phase and water as the dispersed phase. Water was selected as the additive because of its anticipated effect on soot formation, and the heptane fuel phase was chosen to theoretically reduce the likelihood of microexplosions because its boiling point is nearly the same as that of water: 100 C for water and 98 C for heptane. The water content was varied while the initial droplet diameter was kept within a small range. The experiments were carried out in microgravity to reduce the effects of buoyancy and to promote spherical symmetry in the burning process. Spherically symmetric droplet burning is a convenient starting point for analysis, but experimental data are difficult to obtain for this situation as evidenced by the fact that no quantitative data have been reported on unsupported emulsion droplet combustion in a convection-free environment. The present study improves upon past work carried out on emulsion droplet combustion in microgravity which employed emulsion droplets suspended from a fiber. The fiber can be instrusive to the emulsion droplet burning process as it can promote coalescence of the dispersed water phase and heterogeneous nucleation on the fiber. Prior work has shown that the presence of water in liquid hydrocarbons can have both beneficial and detrimental effects on the combustion process. Water is known to reduce soot formation and radiation heat transfer to combustor walls Gollahalli (1979) reduce flame temperatures and thereby NOx emissions, and encourage secondary droplet atomization or microexplosion. Water also tends to retard ignition and and promote early extinction. The former effect restricted the range of water volume fractions as discussed below.