Reducing mechanisms

Abstract

Numerical calculations and sensitivity analyses of the chemistry for a specific combustion problem like a methane flame helps to identify those parameters, which are of primary importance. This knowledge can be used to derive a reduced mechanism with explicit equations for steady state species. Such a mechanism reduces the chemistry of methane flames to four global reactions involving seven reacting species. This is considerably less than the 15 reacting species of the starting mechanism or the many more of a full mechanism. But the validity of the reduced mechanism is restricted to the application for which it has been derived. A mechanism derived for flame applications should therefore, as an example, not be applied to ignition problems where different elementary reactions are important. However, the range of application of reduced mechanisms for flames covers a large range of stoichiometry and pressures.