A novel combined baffle-cavity micro-combustor configuration for Micro-Thermo-Photo-Voltaic applications

doi:10.1016/j.cjche.2019.05.002

Abstract

Abstract: The major issues of Micro-Thermo-Photo-Voltaic (MTPV) micro-combustors are flame instabilities, which narrow the operational range, and non-uniform wall temperature, which lowers the overall efficiency. The purpose of the present research is to propose a novel micro-combustor with combined baffle and cavity configuration to address these issues. For this aim, a numerical modeling approach is validated and used. The performance of the improved combustor is compared with another recent baffle-bluff configuration. It is shown that the novel design improves the average wall temperature by 36.4 K and mitigates its standard deviation by 13.4 K. Moreover, using the optimal baffle thickness, these enhancements can be augmented by 4% raise of average wall temperature, 62% increase of temperature uniformity, and 20% reduction in overall emission. The baffle length of 0.6 times the combustor length and thickness of 0.0625 times the baffle spacing result in the optimal operation due to the flame lift-off in the upstream direction. According to the sensitivity analysis, the most effective geometrical parameters are the baffle length and thickness. It is expected that using this novel micro-combustor with optimized design parameters improves the overall efficiency of MTPV systems.

Key words: Microscale, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Reaction, Micro-combustion, Micro-Thermo-Photo-Voltaic (MTPV), Emission

摘要： The major issues of Micro-Thermo-Photo-Voltaic (MTPV) micro-combustors are flame instabilities, which narrow the operational range, and non-uniform wall temperature, which lowers the overall efficiency. The purpose of the present research is to propose a novel micro-combustor with combined baffle and cavity configuration to address these issues. For this aim, a numerical modeling approach is validated and used. The performance of the improved combustor is compared with another recent baffle-bluff configuration. It is shown that the novel design improves the average wall temperature by 36.4 K and mitigates its standard deviation by 13.4 K. Moreover, using the optimal baffle thickness, these enhancements can be augmented by 4% raise of average wall temperature, 62% increase of temperature uniformity, and 20% reduction in overall emission. The baffle length of 0.6 times the combustor length and thickness of 0.0625 times the baffle spacing result in the optimal operation due to the flame lift-off in the upstream direction. According to the sensitivity analysis, the most effective geometrical parameters are the baffle length and thickness. It is expected that using this novel micro-combustor with optimized design parameters improves the overall efficiency of MTPV systems.

关键词: Microscale, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Reaction, Micro-combustion, Micro-Thermo-Photo-Voltaic (MTPV), Emission

E. Amani, A. Daneshgar, A. Hemmatzade. A novel combined baffle-cavity micro-combustor configuration for Micro-Thermo-Photo-Voltaic applications[J]. Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering, 2020, 28(2): 403-413.

E. Amani, A. Daneshgar, A. Hemmatzade. A novel combined baffle-cavity micro-combustor configuration for Micro-Thermo-Photo-Voltaic applications[J]. 中国化学工程学报, 2020, 28(2): 403-413.

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