Experimental and Modeling Study of the High‐Temperature Ignition of Methane and Methane Mixtures with Ethane and Propane

An important part of deepening our understanding of the reaction mechanism of natural gas oxidation is validating a detailed model against experimental flame and ignition data. Ignition delays in shock‐heated CH4–O2 mixtures, with and without ignition‐promoting additives, account for most of the available validation data. Most, but not all, ignition delays in such mixtures reported in the literature have been found to agree with calculations done using the GRI‐Mech 1.2 model. Additional reflected shock wave ignition experiments were done to explore possible reasons for the mismatches and to study the promotion of CH4 ignition by small amounts of C2H6 and C3H8 additives. Empirical correlations were derived that describe ignition delays in CH4–O2–C2H6 (C3H8).