An experimental study of reactive turbulent mixing

An experimental study of two coaxial gas streams, which react very rapidly, was performed to investigate the mixing characteristics of turbulent flow fields. The center stream consisted of a CO-N2 mixture and the outer annular stream consisted of air vitiated by H2 combustion. The streams were at equal velocity (50 m/sec) and temperature (1280 K). Turbulence measurements were obtained using hot film anemometry. A sampling probe was used to obtain time averaged gas compositions. Six different turbulence generators were placed in the annular passage to alter the flow field mixing characteristics. The turbulence generators affected the bulk mixing of the streams and the extent of CO conversion to different degrees. The effects can be related to the average eddy size (integral scale) and the bulk mixing. Higher extents of conversion of CO to CO2 were found be increasing the bulk mixing and decreasing the average eddy size.