Investigation of Combustion Characteristics in Porous Media Using CFD Methods

Combustion problems and high pollutants emissions motivate researchers to enhance combustion process. Therefore, it requires an optimum combustor design for efficient burning. Porous media burner (PMB) has been widely investigated and proven to be well suited for gas fuels combustion. In the present research combustion of methane - air mixture has been studied numerically using FLUENT software. The user defined function (UDF) was used to so extend the ability of FLUENT for considering energy equation for solid phase and radiation term. The effects of feed flow rate, the equivalence ratio and thermal conductivity of porous media were investigated on combustion quality. The results show that temperature and species profiles changes considerably at the interface of porous media and near the wall. Considering gas and solid temperatures reveals that the conductivity of porous media has a significant effect on suitable distribution of flame. The obtained results show that the flame is distributed on porous media uniformly, despite conventional burners which the flame is local.