A Comparative Study of the Hydrogen Auto-Ignition Process in Oxygen–Nitrogen and Oxygen–Water Vapor Oxidizer: Numerical Investigations in Mixture Fraction Space and 3D Forced Homogeneous Isotropic Turbulent Flow Field

In this paper, we analyze the auto-ignition process of hydrogen in a hot oxidizer stream composed of oxygen–nitrogen and oxygen–water vapor with nitrogen/water vapor mass fractions in a range of 0.1–0.9. The temperature of the oxidizer varies from 1100 K to 1500 K and the temperature of hydrogen is assumed to be 300 K. The research is performed in 1D mixture fraction space and in a forced homogeneous isotropic turbulent (HIT) flow field. In the latter case, the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) method combined with the Eulerian Stochastic Field (ESF) combustion model is applied. The results obtained in mixture fraction space aim to determine the most reactive mixture fraction, maximum flame temperature, and dependence on the scalar dissipation rate. Among others, we found that the ignition in H2-O2-H2O mixtures occurs later than in H2-O2-N2 mixtures, especially at low oxidizer temperatures. On the other hand, for a high oxidizer temperature, the ignitability of H2-O2-H2O mixtures is extended, i.e., the ignition occurs for a larger content of H2O and takes place faster. The 3D LES-ESF results show that the ignition time is virtually independent of initial conditions, e.g., randomness of an initial flow field and turbulence intensity. The latter parameter, however, strongly affects the flame evolution. It is shown that the presence of water vapor decreases ignitability and makes flames more prone to extinction.