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Combustion mechanism development and CFD simulation for the prediction of soot emission during flaring

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Abstract

Industrial Flares are important safety devices to burn off the unwanted gas during process startup, shutdown, or upset. However, flaring, especially the associated smoke, is a symbol of emissions from refineries, oil gas fields, and chemical processing plants. How to simultaneously achieve high combustion efficiency (CE) and low soot emission is an important issue. Soot emissions are influenced by many factors. Flare operators tend to over-steam or over-air to suppress smoke, which results in low CE. How to achieve optimal flare performance remains a question to the industry and the regulatory agencies. In this paper, regulations in the US regarding flaring were reviewed. In order to determine the optimal operating window for the flare, different combustion mechanisms related to soot emissions were summarized. A new combustion mechanism (Vsoot) for predicting soot emissions was developed and validated against experimental data. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models combined with Vsoot combustion mechanism were developed to simulate the flaring events. It was observed that simulation results agree well with experimental data.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dan F. Smith Department of Chemical Engineering, Lamar University, Beaumont, TX, 77710, USA

    Anan Wang, Helen H. Lou, Daniel Chen & Vijaya Damodara

  2. SINOPEC Safety Engineering Institute, Qingdao, 266000, China

    Anfeng Yu & Wenyi Dang

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lamar University, Beaumont, TX, 77710, USA

    Xianchang Li & Ajit Patki

  4. Department of Chemistry, Lamar University, Beaumont, TX, 77710, USA

    Christopher Martin

Authors
  1. Anan Wang
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  2. Helen H. Lou
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  3. Daniel Chen
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  4. Anfeng Yu
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  5. Wenyi Dang
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  6. Xianchang Li
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  7. Christopher Martin
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  8. Vijaya Damodara
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  9. Ajit Patki
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Helen H. Lou or Wenyi Dang.

Additional information

Helen H. Lou is a Professor in the Dan F. Smith Department of Chemical Engineering, Lamar University, USA. Her research focuses on sustainable engineering, process systems engineering, process safety and combustion. Dr. Lou was the Chair of AIChE Sustainable Engineering Forum (SEF) in November, 2010. She received the AIChE SEF Education Award in 2014, the University Professor Award from Lamar University in 2013. Currently, she serves as a Director of AIChE Fuel and Petrochemicals Division. She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Zhejiang University, Hang Zhou, China (1993), then worked four years in SinoPec Luoyang Petrochemical Engineering Corporation (LPEC). She received the following degrees from Wayne State University in Detroit, MI: an M.S. in Chemical Engineering (1998), an M.A. in Computer Science (2001) and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering (2001).

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Wang, A., Lou, H.H., Chen, D. et al. Combustion mechanism development and CFD simulation for the prediction of soot emission during flaring. Front. Chem. Sci. Eng. 10, 459–471 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-016-1594-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-016-1594-y

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