Large-eddy simulation of a turbulent reacting plume

The results of large-eddy simulations (LES) of a chemically reacting, dispersing plume in a turbulent boundary layer are presented. The detailed simulations of the dispersion mechanisms are used to investigate the effects of turbulent fluctuations on nonlinear chemical reactions. The idealized single reaction between ozone and nitrogen oxides, NO+O₃→NO₂+O₂, is used as a representative simple, irreversible binary reaction. Effects of different reaction rates are investigated by varying the source NO concentration, while maintaining a constant ambient ozone level. The simulations demonstrate that the rate of production of NO₂ is significantly affected by the turbulent nature of the dispersing plume. The effect of incomplete turbulent mixing of the two reactants on the reaction rate can persist for long distances downstream, particularly for the high NO levels typical of power plant stacks. The LES results also show that the important measure of the turbulent fluctuations, the turbulence segregation coefficient, may be reasonably approximated by a constant value over most of the plume cross-section. This result may prove useful for simplified plume modeling, but will depend on whether the range of constant segregation coefficient covers the whole reaction region since this takes place predominantly in the plumeedges.