Experiments and numerical simulation on methane flame quenching by water mist

The study of extinguishment using water mist has been motivated due to the phase-out of the use of halens and the search for alternative means that preserve all of the benefits of a clean total flooding agent without adverse environmental impact. With the numerical simulation, we analyzed a gas–liquid two-phase problem including water (liquid), air and methane (gas) using Eulerian equations for the liquid phase and the full Navier–Stokes equations for the gas phase. Gaseous mass, momentum and energy equations are integrated simultaneously by a Harten–Yee explicit non-MUSCL modified-flux type TVD scheme for the convective terms and a central difference scheme for the viscous terms. Liquid phase conservation equations are solved with an application of a flux-vector-splitting scheme. In the experiments in an open room (500×500×500 mm) we observed an interaction of the diffusion flame with the water mists. The results show remarkable flame quenching and a good agreement between the numerical and experimental results.