Fire may be one of the original innovations of man, but it still surprises us hundreds of centuries after the first man-made flames.
In 2016, scientists at the University of Maryland stumbled upon a completely new type of flame while investigating the use of fire vortices to clean up oil storms in water. At first, the flame began as a large, violent, yellow flame – then suddenly turned into a small, silent, spinning blue flame.
They called it a “blue whirl“For the way it twisted and spun. But this whirl was more than beautiful – it also burned soot-free.
Four years later, a new study confirms that the blue vortex is unique and indicates that the flame could be very useful in striving for clean fuel consumption.
“This flame has the potential to be used as an ideal energy source with reduced pollution and reduced complexity,” the research team said. Inverse by e-mail. “It is usually a very difficult process to burn liquid hydrocarbon fuels in a clean way without soot production. The blue whirl can burn many different types of liquid hydrocarbon fuels without producing harmful soot, all within the same and simple configuration.”
These findings were published Wednesday in Science Advances.
Find the “stream structure” of blue shrinkage – The researchers used computer models to better understand the origin and structure of this bizarre blue flame. The aim was to better understand the scalability of this flame and how it could be used in the future to provide a low emission way to burn fossil fuels.
While blue vortices are described as tame and stable, scientists saw them initially step through a “noisy, turbulent, yellow vortex”. The study team notes that this turbulence caused previous experimental attempts to turn this flame to be difficult. Therefore, in this case, they decided to model it from a safe distance with computer simulations.
In the future, further controlled simulations could help answer fundamental questions such as whether or not these blue curls are scalable, and if they can be created without going through their unfair fire state, the team writes.
This video compares the numerical simulation (center) with two experimental visualizations of the blue vortex.
To recreate this blue vortex in the digital world, researchers first had to simulate the same parameters that were used in the lab, such as the geometry of the air and gas flow. From there, they were able to adjust different inputs to see how different environments affect the origin and stability of this blue flame.
While some experimental and simulated parameters differ – for example, the simulated version included a fuel injection, while experimental settings included fuel evaporation – the authors write that the differences are not outside the realm of physical possibility.
By looking at their simulated blue curls, the researchers were able to identify that the flame was in fact not a single flame, but rather the culmination of three different types of flames:
- Diffusion flame
- Premixed empire
- Lean flame
The nexus of these flames came together to form a fourth structure, a triple flame, which appeared as the fiery blue flame. This was a result of a vortex burglary in the system.
They also found that this top-like flame could reach a temperature above 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Pros and cons – The ability to accurately simulate this blue-collar phenomenon is an important first step toward understanding how (or even if) it can be commercially scaled, the researchers explain.
Because this flame is capable of burning soot-free, it offers exciting opportunities for scientists to explore the potential for low-emission fossil fuel combustion. The researchers tell Inverse that the flame “could potentially be used for the oil industry as a method of remediating fuel spills and for the energy and propulsion sector, which could benefit from a fuel – flexible combustion apparatus with reduced pollution.”
They note that the blue vortex is also a new, potential way to “extract energy from traditional fossil fuels from energy to clean energy with minimal environmental impact.”
While burning fossil fuels, low emissions or not, would be even worse for the environment than sustainable options such as solar and electricity, a solution like this could provide a way to improve existing fuel infrastructure while refining other, greener energy methods. .
Abstract: The blue vortex is a small, stable, spinning blue flame that spontaneously evolved in recent laboratory experiments while studying restless, sooty fire vortices. It burns a range of various liquid hydrocarbon fuels clean without soot production, and presents a previously unknown potential way of burning with low emissions. Here we use numerical simulations to present the flame and current structure of the blue vortex. These simulations show that the blue shrink consists of three different flames – a diffusion flame and formixe rich and lean flames – all coming together in a fourth structure, a triple flame that appears as a creeping blue ring. The results also show that the flow structure arises as a result of vortex rupture, a fluid instability that occurs in hot flows. These simulations are a critical step forward in understanding how to use this previously unknown form of clean consumption.
