Reduced chemical kinetic mechanism for oxidation of methyl methacrylate in flames at atmospheric pressure

Methyl methacrylate (MMA) is the main pyrolysis product of the widely used polymer polymethyl methacrylate; therefore, the compact mechanism of MMA oxidation is of interest for CFD modeling of the spread of a fire over this polymer. A reduced mechanism for MMA combustion consisting of 263 elementary reactions involving 66 species was developed for a detailed chemical-kinetic mechanism of MMA oxidation in flames using Chemical Workbench software. The developed mechanism was validated against experimental data on the speed of premixed MMA/air flame at an equivalence ratio 0.9 < $\phi$ < 1.3 and against literature data on the structure of an MMA/O$_2$/Ar ($\phi$ = 1) flame stabilized on a flat burner at a pressure of 1 atm. The proposed reduced kinetic model for MMA describes the experimental data with satisfactory accuracy, and simulation results for the full and reduced mechanisms MMA oxidation are in good agreement with each other in terms of the concentrations of the main species of the flame and the concentration of most combustion intermediates, including hydrogen, methane, ethylene, acetylene, propane, acetaldehyde, methyl acrylate, etc.