Flame structure of dimethyl ether/O₂/Ar mixture at 1 atm

For diesel engines, dimethyl ether (DME) is widely used in the world, it is a perspective candidate to replace traditional diesel in the future. The consumption of DME as a motor fuel is constantly increasing. DME has a very low propensity to soot formation during combustion, which allows not only to reduce harmful emissions into the atmosphere, but also to improve the completeness of combustion. To validate available chemical kinetic models for DME combustion, in this work we report our experimental data on the chemical structure of a laminar premixed stoichiometric DME/O₂/Ar flame stabilized at 1 atm on a flat burner. Flame sampling molecular beam-mass spectrometry is used to obtain spatial distribution of mole fractions of many species in the flame. The experimental data are compared with the calculation results obtained using PREMIX code and two detailed chemical kinetic mechanisms available from literature for DME combustion.