Experimental and numerical study of the structure of premixed H₂/CO/O₂/Ar flames at atmospheric pressure

Elaboration of a predictive and well validated kinetic mechanism for combustion of H₂/CO mixtures is the key to development of advanced technologies for effective syngas burning in power generation systems. Moreover, understanding the combustion chemistry of H₂/CO mixtures is a prerequisite for a comprehensive description of hydrocarbons chemistry and development of predictive chemical kinetic models for combustion of transportation fuels. In this work we report new experimental data for chemical speciation in the atmospheric pressure burner-stabilized premixed flames diluted with Ar and fuelled with H₂/CO (1:1) mixture at equivalence ratios of 1 and 2. Flame sampling molecular beam mass spectrometry with soft electron ionization was used to examine the flames. Recent detailed chemical kinetic mechanisms for syngas combustion available from literature were used to simulate the experimental profiles with the CHEMKIN code. A compact kinetic mechanism including 11 species and 16 reactions was elaborated to reproduce the experimental data.