Combustion and heat transfer at meso-scale with thermal recuperation

Results are presented from successfully designed and fabricated meso-scale ceramic combustors that incorporate internal thermal energy recirculation. The combustor provided sustained operation using propane and air as the reactants. Flames could be obtained well below the normal quenching distance. The development required examination of several different combustor designs and materials. Flammability limits of these combustors have been determined experimentally. Experimental investigations have been performed on the effects of flame holder geometry, material conductivity, equivalence ratio, and inlet Reynolds number on the combustor performance. Measurement of the reactant preheating and product exhaust temperatures was performed using K-type thermocouples which were installed with minimal intrusion to the flow. The reactant preheating temperatures were observed to be in the range 700 K–1000 K. However, the combustor suffered significant overall heat loss (50–85%) which was implied by the low exhaust temperatures (500 K–750 K). For a constant fuel flow rate, the exhaust temperature increased monotonously with decrease in equivalence ratio until the blow-off condition implying that the combustor’s maximum thermal efficiency occurs at its lean blow-off limit. Thermal imaging of the combustor walls was performed using infrared camera to obtain the temperature distribution within the combustor. Numerical simulations were performed with the aid of CFD software using a heat loss coefficient chosen so as to give best correlation with experimental results. These CFD simulations helped to obtain better insight of the dependence of combustor performance on thermal conductivity of the material and heat load.