Blast Wave Initiation Energy for the Detonation of Methane-Ethane-Air Mixtures

Abstract
This paper deals with the detonability of unconfined clouds of natural gas and air. The effect of the presence of ethane in methane air clouds was experimentally studied. All tests were conducted using stoichiometric fuel-air mixtures where ethane was varied between 0 and 5.66 percent by volume of the total mixture. A detonation is characterized in the experiments by a non-decaying constant velocity wave propagation. Plots of critical initiation energy versus percent C2H6 show that very small amounts of ethane have a significant effect on the detonability of methane-air clouds.

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