Characteristics of low vapor pressure oil ignition developed with irradiation of mega hertz level ultrasonic

In liquid fuel vaporizing type combustor for civil use, large amount of the electric power is consumed in pre-heating of fuel vaporizer during a standby period. Reduction of consumed power in pre-heating is regarded as important to develop a performance of the vaporizing type combustor from the viewpoint of energy saving. We proposed the oil combustion system using the MHz-ultrasonic atomizing method without the preheating process. In this work, we manufactured kerosene pre-vaporizing combustor with ultrasonic oscillator which had frequency of 1.7 MHz. Low CO and NOx emission had been already achieved with manufactured combustor by authors in 2002. Aiming to investigate fundamental characteristics of the ignition process with ultrasonic atomizing, the ignition time requirement was measured and the flame luminescence was detected with spectroscopic analysis in order to consider the mixing state on pre-mixing combustor by judging differences of the flame luminescence. As the results, ultrasonic atomizing method was very effective for vaporization of kerosene. But heat release rate of only 0.54 kW was obtained with input power of 33 W because the effect of the sound absorption was not negligible. The time requirement for the ignition was influenced by an equivalence ratio and balance between primary air flow rate and secondary one. Especially, the ignition time had different tendencies between fuel rich and fuel lean condition. With flow visualization, it was clarified that probability of the ignition depended on a difference of flow pattern of the fuel aerosol.