Simplified chemical kinetic mechanism of premixed laminar combustion of methanol-air mixture

On the basis of the detailed chemical kinetic mechanism of methanol oxidation, the simplified chemical kinetic mechanism of methanol including 18 species and 28-step elementary reaction was presented to describe premixed laminar flame speed with sensitivity analysis. It is found that the methanol oxidation exhibits strong sensitivity to the kinetics of methanol decomposition and the chain reaction of radicals such as H and OH, in which HCO+M and H+O2 are the main reactions to generate H and OH radicals, respectively. The comparison between the calculated results and experimental data shows that the present simplified mechanism could simulate laminar flame speed and flame structure reasonably in the range of equivalence ratios from 0.6 to 1.2 and at different initial temperatures. Compared with the detailed mechanism, the simplified mechanism is more suitable to coupling with three-dimensional CFD models.