Junjie Chen^*, Wenya Song, Xuhui Gao, Longfei Yan, Deguang Xu

Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol.7, pp. 1-9, 2016, DOI:10.5098/hmt.7.3

Abstract The flame stability of single-pass heat-recirculation micro-combustors was investigated using computational fluid dynamics and compared to singlechannel micro-combustors with respect to critical heat loss coefficient and total power loss. The effect of wall thermal conductivity was also explored. The simulations show that heat recirculation profoundly affects blowout because of preheating of the cold incoming gases but has only minimal effect on extinction. In the limit of low-conductivity walls, the heat-recirculation micro-combustor is much more stable than the single-channel microcombustor. Under certain conditions, the heat recirculation micro-combustor can operate with room-temperature inlet and outlet streams and moderate outer wall temperatures while… More >

Junjie Chen^* , Wenya Song, Deguang Xu

Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol.8, pp. 1-10, 2017, DOI:10.5098/hmt.8.21

Abstract The combustion and heat transfer characteristics of hydrogen-air or methane-air mixtures in catalytic micro-combustors were studied numerically to assess the impact of wall thermal properties and key operation parameters on the thermal uniformity. A two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed with detailed hetero-/homogeneous chemistry, heat conduction within the solid wall, surface radiation heat transfer, and external heat losses. Parametric studies were carried out to investigate the effect of wall thermal conductivity, feed composition, and flow rate on the thermal uniformity during highly exothermic catalytic reactions. Comparisons of hydrogen- with methane-air systems were made. Based on these insights, an… More >