A Computational Study Of The Chemical Kinetics Of Hydrogen Combustion

A set of elementary reactions and their corresponding rate coefficients has been assembled to describe the homogeneous H2-O2 reaction system over the temperature range 300-3000 K. The reaction mechanism was drawn together assuming that H2-O2 reactive mixtures could be adequately described in terms of self-consistent, thermal distributions of electronically neutral, ground-state reactants, intermediates and products. The resulting time-dependent ordinary differential equations describing the system were integrated assuming various initial pressures, temperatures and initial concentrations of reactants and diluents. The computed results have been compared with experimentally observed induction times, second explosion limits, the rate of reaction above the second explosion limit and the temporal behavior of reaction species. The good agreement between the computational and experimental results attests to the accuracy of the assembled mechanism in its description of the homogeneous reaction system and supports the validity of the set of associated rate coefficients for the elementary reactions of the mechanism over a broad range of reaction conditions. (Author).