A team of researchers working at the University of Maryland has discovered the structure of the mysterious blue-hot flame. In her paper published in the journal Science Advances, describes the group with computer simulations to determine the structure of the unique type of flame.
Back in 2016, a team of researchers discovered what they described as a blue swirling flame while studying the properties of liquid fuel floating on water. They had added fuel to a tank full of water that was trapped in a space that generated a vortex. She described a fire that first appeared on a tornado, but shortly thereafter settled into what they called a blue swirling flame. They noted at the time that the paint suggested that it was probably very efficient, burning the fuel without creating soot – a property that can be useful in cleaning up oil storms. Since then, others have looked at the unique kind of flame, but no one had tried to understand the structure. In this new attempt, the researchers looked closer at the flame and found that there were actually three types of flames fusing into one.
To learn more about the nature of the blue swirling flame, the researchers created computer simulations with conditions that were known to generate them. They then adjust the parameters slowly until they could generate the flame virtually. She discovered that the flame was actually the result of three known types of flames that fuse: those with an invisible outer flame, which happens when there is less fuel than oxygen in the mix – and two that had types of visible inner flames where higher fuel ratios are more common.
The researchers suggest that knowing that the blue swirling flame consists of other types of flames could allow the creation in more controllable conditions – and it should skip the tornado-shaped stage, which is a good thing, they note, because such flames are dangerous, as has been noted in wildfires in recent years. They also suggest that because of their efficiency such flames can be used for cleaner combustion processes.
(A) Stable blue shrinkage. (B) Slightly unstable blue vortex with soot in the center, suggesting a bubble mode of vortex burglary. Credit: H. Xiao, University of Science and Technology of China
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JD Chung et al., “Revealing the Structure of the Blue Whirl,” Science Advances (2020). advances.sciencemag.org/lookup… .1126 / sciadv.aba0827
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Citation: Discovery of the structure of the mysterious blue burning flame (2020, August 13) retrieved August 13, 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-08-revealing-mysterious-blue-flame.html
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