Eulerian simulations of a turbulent iron-methane burner

Kurzfassung

CFD simulations of iron combustion have thus far primarily focused on laminar flames. Such flames occur in lab-scale setups; however, industrial iron combustion requires turbulent iron flames. This, in turn, needs scalable CFD simulations of turbulent iron flames. Existing simulations are mainly Lagrangian, with heavy implications for their scalability up to industrial level. In this work, we will present Eulerian simulations of turbulent iron-methane flames based on the work of Steffens et al. (2025). Our goal is to replicate their results in a scalable manner. This involves modelling the particle size distribution (PSD) of iron powder using a sectional approach, where particles are classed into so-called bins depending on their diameter, allowing for accurate modelling of both the PSD as well as phenomena dependent on the particle diameter, such as the reaction kinetics. After a brief overview of the state of the art, we will compare our results with the literature. This will include comparison of the flow fields and the temperature distribution throughout the burner, as well as aspects such as computational effort and simulation time. In this way, we shall demonstrate that the sectional approach presents a viable method of simulating iron flames in a scalable manner.