Exercise 600.1 — Adiabatic flame temperature¶
Hydrogen vs kerosene combustion¶
🧪 Script
equilibrium_calculation.py
Supporting files (same folder):
- Mechanism:
kerosene.yaml
Learning objectives¶
- Compute adiabatic flame temperatures for H₂–air and kerosene–air mixtures
- Compare equilibrium chemistry with a simplified main-products model
- Understand how fuel chemistry affects temperature, dissociation, and heat release
Model description¶
The script computes adiabatic flame temperatures using two approaches:
-
Full equilibrium calculation
- Chemical equilibrium at fixed pressure and enthalpy
- Includes dissociation at high temperature
-
Main products only
- Assumes complete combustion to CO₂/H₂O/N₂
- Neglects dissociation effects
Both are applied to:
- hydrogen–air mixtures
- kerosene–air mixtures
How to run¶
From the script folder (chapters/600_hydrogen_combustion/scripts):
python equilibrium_calculation.py
Guided questions¶
1) Fuel chemistry and flame temperature¶
- Why does hydrogen typically exhibit higher adiabatic flame temperatures?
- How does molecular structure influence heat release per unit mass?
2) Role of dissociation¶
- How large is the difference between equilibrium and main-products results?
- Why does dissociation limit peak flame temperature?
3) Equivalence ratio effects¶
- How does flame temperature vary with equivalence ratio?
- Are trends similar for hydrogen and kerosene?
Student tasks¶
Task 1 — Temperature comparison¶
Compute and report:
- adiabatic flame temperature for H₂ and kerosene
- results from both equilibrium and simplified models
Explain the differences physically.
Task 2 — specific heat comparison¶
Compare specific heats of H₂ and kerosene products at different equivalence ratios.
Limitations¶
- No flame structure or kinetics
- No pressure losses
- Idealized thermodynamic equilibrium
Results should be interpreted as upper bounds on achievable temperatures.