Assessment of the EDC combustion model in MILD conditions with in-furnace experimental data

The paper presents a detailed experimental data set in a MILD combustion furnace. This laboratory scale furnace was especially designed to combine a small computational time with a kind of industrial operation. The in-furnace measurements are compared to the numerical results obtained with two turbulence–chemistry interaction models: the Eddy-Dissipation Model (EDFR) and the Eddy-Dissipation Concept (EDC). It is confirmed that the EDC model brings interesting improvements, compared to the EDFR model. First, it improves the prediction of the NOx emission thanks to the possibility to include in the reaction mechanism some radical species required to compute the NO reaction rates. Then, this model is able to capture the kinetic limitation responsible for the reaction delay and which impacts the reaction progress through the furnace. The effect of the operating conditions is correctly reproduced in a relative way, what is not the case with the EDFR model. However, due to its high sensitivity to the operating conditions the EDC model is not able to reproduce the shape and the position of the reaction zone with precision. In conclusion, the EDC model still needs to be optimized for MILD combustion modelling and requires detailed experimental data to this end, as proposed in this paper.