Evaporation and combustion of spray consisting of three-phase methane-hydrate particles

Flame propagation into a dilute spray containing three-phase particles is examined, employing a new mathematical model. The particles are comprised of solid, icy core that encages gas molecules within it. Once the particles are placed in a hot environment, the solid core starts to melt, thus the solid core is then surrounded by a bubbly mixture containing liquid and immiscible gas bubbles. The particles are uniformly distributed, but the flammable gas molecules are becoming premixed only at a particle depletion front. This definition of a depletion front relaxes the abrupt evaporation front that is often used in analyses of laminar flame propagation. Using this approach, we were able to account for the non-linear evaporation characteristics of the three-phase particles, which has a significant effect on the dynamics of the supported flame temperature, location and velocity. The results presented are of methane hydrate (MH) particles.