Swirling Combustor Energy Converter: H2/Air Simulations of Separated Chambers

Energies

Angelo Minotti¹  Paolo Teofilatto² 

[1] Department of Astronautic, Electrics & Energetics Engineering, University of Rome “La Sapienza” Via Eudossiana 18, Rome 00184, Italy; E-Mail

关键词: meso-combustor;    hydrogen-air combustion;    whirl flow;    fluid-structure interaction;    computational fluid dynamics (CFD);    detailed chemistry;   

DOI  :  10.3390/en8099930

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

This work reports results related to the “EU-FP7-HRC-Power” project aiming at developing micro-meso hybrid sources of power. One of the goals of the project is to achieve surface temperatures up to more than 1000 K, with a ∆T ≤ 100 K, in order to be compatible with a thermal/electrical conversion by thermo-photovoltaic cells. The authors investigate how to reach that goal adopting swirling chambers integrated in a thermally-conductive and emitting element. The converter consists of a small parallelepiped brick inside two separated swirling meso-combustion chambers, which heat up the parallelepiped, emitting material by the combustion of H₂ and air at ambient pressure. The overall dimension is of the order of cm. Nine combustion simulations have been carried out assuming detailed chemistry, several length/diameter ratios (Z/D = 3, 5 and 11) and equivalence ratios (0.4, 0.7 and 1); all are at 400 W of injected chemical power. Among the most important results are the converter surfaces temperatures, the heat loads, provided to the environment, and the chemical efficiency. The high chemical efficiency, η > 99.9%, is due to the relatively long average gas residence time coupled with the fairly good mixing due to the swirl motion and the impinging air/fuel jets that provide heat and radicals to the flame.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.