Ricerc@Sapienza

Hydrogen combustion releases just clean water as its main product without generating any carbon dioxide (CO2). For this reason it represent a key technological point for the hydrogen economy which is the framework in which hydrogen is employed as a zero-carbon fuel for a plethora of applications requiring high energy densities as those typical of propulsion and power applications. The development of hydrogen based combustion devices is often hindered by the lack of reliable predictive numerical simulations tools which still need detailed data for model developments. The present research project aims at filling this gaps, providing the much needed data-driven modeling support to clean combustion in the hydrogen economy.
High pressure, lean premixed hydrogen-air turbulent combustion in fact rises as the most efficient combustion procedure, which is however not easily achieved since lean hydrogen flames are intrinsically unstable mainly due to the unbalanced competition between heat and mass diffusion of hydrogen. The project will investigate the interaction between turbulence and intrinsic instabilities with the following objectives: 1) generation of a large and detailed dataset using state of the art direct numerical simulations employing high order methods capable of taking full advantage of high performance computing infrastructures; 2) Big-data organization, mining and physical understanding of the interaction between intrinsic instability and turbulence; 3) Development of knowledge based combustion models that can be directly used "off the shelf" for the development of new hydrogen based combustion technologies.