An error-controlled adaptive chemistry method for reacting flow simulations

Many technologically important processes in the chemical and mechanical industries involve coupled interactions of heat and mass transfer with chemical reactions - e.g. commercial burners, gas turbines, internal combustion engines, etc. However, detailed computational studies of such processes remain difficult at best, particularly due to the large reaction mechanisms that describe the chemical kinetics over the relevant range of reaction conditions. As a result, reduced models that contain fewer reactions and/or species while still capturing the "important" kinetics are often used in place of the full comprehensive reaction model in modeling complex reacting flows. "Adaptive Chemistry" - a method that uses several smaller locally-accurate reduced reaction models rather than a single "catch-all" model - has been shown in the combustion literature to be a viable option for improving computational efficiency in such studies. However, several outstanding challenges have prevented the adoption of this method in mainstream studies, most notably the difficulty of determining the accuracy of a solution obtained using Adaptive Chemistry. The focus of this research was to develop methods to enable efficient and accurate implementation of Adaptive Chemistry for reacting flow simulations.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Chemical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Oluwole, Oluwayemisi

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• William H. Green.

• Chemical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/37275
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/37275

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37275