Abstract:
Combustion within porous media offers exceptional advantages compared with techniques involving free flame burners. Porous medium burners are characterized by higher burning rates, increasing flame stability, and lower combustion zone temperatures, which lead to reduction in NOX formation. In addition, they show relatively higher turndown ratio, lower CO emissions, higher combustion intensity and more compactness. While past success of the development of the combustion using porous media has been focused on gaseous fuel, little attention has been paid to the combustion of liquid fuel. This work presents a new technique of cyclic flow reversal combustion (CFRC) of liquid fuels within porous media. The liquid kerosene was supplied drop wise through the hot porous burner without atomization. Highly efficient internal heat recirculation from the hot exhaust gases to the liquid fuel and the combustion air is enhanced by the reciprocating flow of the fuel and the combustion air through the porous media. Rapid evaporation and combustion mechanism were studied by measuring the transient temperature profiles within the porous media. Effect of dominate parameters i.e. rate of heat supply, equivalence ratio, half period, particle size of the porous media and insulation of the burner on temperature profiles and emission of pollutants were clarified. Results show that interaction between phases within the porous media plays an important role on enhancing the heat transfer between phases and combustion characteristics. Rapid and complete evaporation followed by intense and stable combustion was realized within the porous media. Stability of the combustion and the corresponding emission characteristics were affected by the various parameters through the variation of the flame locations, flame temperature, and mixing process. Stable combustion within the porous media was achieved at rate of heat supply of 6 - 16 kW, equivalence ratio of 0.45 - 0.56, half period of 30 s, and porous sphere diameter of 10 mm. This new combustion technique yields a promising performance, which offers minimum level of NOX and CO of 98 ppm and 437 ppm (at 0 percent excess air), respectively. These emission levels are relatively lower than those of the conventional free flame with spray atomization at the similar experimental conditions.