Combustion Characterization of Solvents used in Coil Coating Processes: Experiments and Kinetic Modelling

A combined experimental and chemical kinetics modelling approach is presented to account for the combustion behaviour of solvents utilized in coil coating processes. Heating values and laminar burning velocities of typical industrial solvent formulations comprising alcohols, ethers, esters and aromatics are experimentally investigated. Due to the complexity of species participating in the solvent formulations surrogate solvents are introduced, one for each considered formulation. An “in-house” chemical kinetics mechanism has been extended in order to take into account the solvents’ combustion and consists of 321 species participating in 1826 reactions. Its overall performance is validated against the laminar burning velocity measurements. A good qualitative and quantitative reproduction of the experimental curves is depicted with maximum discrepancies observed in the range of 10-15%.