Study of the speed of flame distribution in the combustion of methane-hydrogen fractions
Authors: Taymarov M.A. , Akhmetova R.V. , Chiklyayev Ye.G. , Lavirko Y.V. , Akhmetov E.A. , Garifullina A.O. 
Published: February 2020

At present, natural gas of the Urengoyskoye field is burned in boilers of thermal power plants (TPP) to generate electricity. At the same time, refineries and petrochemical plants deepen the processing of fossil liquid hydrocarbons. The final product of processing is not only motor fuels, ethylene glycols, plastics, accompanying inert gases such as argon, but also a large amount of combustible secondary gaseous mixtures of the methane series. These mixtures contain a wide array of combustible components. Among them there is the methane-hydrogen fraction, which is characterized by a fairly high hydrogen content. A distinctive feature of the use of hydrogen as a fuel is the high rate of flame propagation and the relatively low heat of combustion [1, p.6-8]. The methane-hydrogen fraction due to the volatility of the composition and a wide range of changes in the heat of combustion was recently used in refineries for their own needs as an insignificant additive to combusted natural gas in process furnaces [2-5]. If the methane-hydrogen fraction was not utilized as a fuel in these furnaces, it was burned in flares. Due to the increase in oil refining volumes and the increase in the amount of methane-hydrogen fraction produced, it became realistic to use this gaseous fraction as the main fuel for power boilers of thermal power plants located near petrochemical plants. In the near future, it is planned to use the methane-hydrogen fraction as an additive to the natural gas for 20 power steam boilers of the Nizhnekamsk CHP-1 with a total thermal capacity of 6000 MW. The supplier of the methane-hydrogen fraction is the TAIF NK oil refineries. Depending on the technology of oil refining, the hydrogen content in the methane-hydrogen fraction ranges from 10 to 27% (by weight). The concentration limits of hydrogen ignition in a mixture with air have been experimentally studied by many researchers [6–8] mainly during bench testing or inside laboratories. A feature of the oxidation of hydrogen by air oxygen is the fact that there is a difference between the spread of the flame in limited volumes and in large volumes of the furnace space of energy boilers [9]. In small volumes, when the flame front collides with the wall, oxidation reactions are interrupted, and this does not occur in large volumes. Therefore, the study of flame propagation speed and concentration limits of ignition of methanehydrogen fractions mixed with air in relation to the conditions of furnace volumes of power boilers is relevant. In this work using the in-house software [2-5] calculations were made to determine the burning rate for various compositions of mixtures of methane-hydrogen fractions (MHF) with Urengoi natural gas. It was found that the flame propagation rate of the MHF, compared with hydrogen (see Table 2), decreases 1.76 times. For a mixture of the MHF with Urengoi gas with thermal fractions of the MHF of 12% and 25%, the flame propagation rate increases, respectively, 1.4 times and 1.78 times compared with burning pure Urengoi gas.