Even if we dont typically think of it, fire is essential for many aspects of our everyday lives. Space station research study intends to open more of its tricks.
Fire was not just important to human life in antiquity but still remains integral to our modern lives. It heats our houses and water, cooks our food, generates electrical power, and moves our vehicles, to name a few things. Yet, offered its terrific complexity, there is still much we dont understand about the intricacies of flame behavior.
A team of scientists from academic community, NASAs Glenn Research Center, the firms Biological and Physical Sciences Division, and other companies just recently finished a series of investigations on the International Space Station to acquire a much better understanding of combustion phenomena. The Advanced Combustion via Microgravity Experiments, or ACME, jobs in-orbit screening started in 2017 and consisted of six effective examinations of non-premixed flames of gaseous fuel.
JAXA astronaut Norishige Kanai reconfigures the High Bit-depth Multispectral (HiBMs) video camera within the Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR) for the Electric-Field Effects on Laminar Diffusion Flames (E-FIELD Flames) experiment. Credit: NASA
Non-premixed flames, like candle flames, are ones in which the fuel and oxidizer remain separate before response or ignition. Premixed flames occur in a number of those daily usage scenarios, when the fuel and oxidizer are mixed prior to reaction.
” A microgravity environment allows researchers to explore flame behavior without the impact of gravity, so they can investigate the underlying physics behind flame structure and habits,” said Dennis Stocker, ACME Project Scientist at NASA Glenn. “That understanding can assist designers and engineers here in the world develop heating systems, power plants, boilers, and other combustion systems that are more efficient, less polluting, and safer.”
Combustion researchers created experiments on the spaceport station that evaluated the behavior of round flames in microgravity. Credit: NASA
The six ACME experiments were:
The experiments were carried out with a single modular set of hardware in the space stations Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR). The tests were from another location commanded from NASAs Glenn ISS Payload Operations Center in Cleveland.
” Over 1,500 flames were fired up, more than three times the number originally prepared,” said Stocker. “Several firsts were also accomplished, possibly most significantly in the areas of cool and round flames.”
Stocker said about 50 personnel from NASA Glenn, academic community, and ZIN Technologies, Inc. supported ACME during 4 and a half years of in-orbit operations. In addition, more than 30 crew members from six countries played an essential role in setting up the hardware for each examination and replacing gas bottles, igniter ideas, and other experiment-specific hardware as required.
The ACME hardware has been gotten rid of from the CIR to make room for the Solid Fuel Ignition and Extinction, or SoFIE, hardware that launched in February 2022, which is the next action in NASAs in-orbit combustion research. The ACME hardware is arranged to return to Earth in the coming months with the intent to launch once again to the area station with future experiments.
Burning Rate Emulator (BRE)– showed products can burn for minutes in the lack of air circulation in team vehicle environments being considered for future missions.
Coflow Laminar Diffusion Flame (CLD Flame)– yielded benchmark data at highly-diluted and sooty extremes to enhance computational models.
Cool Flames Investigation with Gases (CFI-G)– resulted in non-premixed cool flames of gaseous fuels without improvements, such as heated reactants, pulsed plasmas, or ozone addition, that have been needed in ground testing.
Electric-Field Effects on Laminar Diffusion Flames (E-FIELD Flames)– demonstrated the potential use of electric fields to minimize emissions from non-premixed flames.
Flame Design– showed, for the very first time, quasi-steady non-premixed spherical flames, and radiative heat loss causing termination for larger flames.
Structure and Response of Spherical Diffusion Flames (s-Flame)– provided information on flame development and termination for the enhancement of computational models.
