Experimental studies of the fundamental flame speeds of syngas (H2/CO)/air mixtures

Syngas laminar flame speed measurements have been carried out at atmospheric pressure and ambient temperature using spherically expanding flames. Mixture compositions ranging from 5/95% to 50/50% H-2/CO and equivalence ratios from 0.4 to 5.0 have been investigated. Both state-of-the-art linear and non-linear extrapolation methodologies have been tested and extracted laminar flame speeds have been compared to datasets available in the literature as well as computations using two leading kinetic mechanisms for syngas combustion. Syngas flame sensitivities to stretch have been characterized by extracting the corresponding Markstein lengths. In order to explain important disparities found for rich syngas flames among datasets of the literature, computations have been performed to quantify the possible extent of velocity reduction corresponding to small contents of iron pentacarbonyl. (C) 2010 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.