Investigation of an optimal operating condition for a micro combustor regarding basic thermophotovoltaic system requirements

In this study, effects of equivalence ratio and thermal power on combustion and emission behaviour of premixed hydrogen air mixtures were numerically investigated by constructing 3D micro combustor models. Combustion behaviour was analysed by examining combustor outer wall and centreline temperature profiles, and convective and radiative heat transfer quantities. Besides, emission behaviour was analysed in terms of centreline NOx profiles and NOx amounts emanated from exhaust of the micro combustor. Regarding these, optimal operating condition with respect to combustion performance and pollutant emissions was investigated by varying thermal power and equivalence ratio. Turbulence model used in this study is RNG k-ε (Yilmaz et al. Int J Hydrog Energy 42:25744–25755, 2017). Multistep combustion reaction process with 9 species and 19 steps was simulated using Eddy dissipation concept model. Data obtained from this study was validated against published experimental data (Tang et al. Int J Hydrog Energy 40:2396–2403, 2015). Results showed that optimal operating condition can be gained at 0.8 equivalence ratio and 1200 ml/min hydrogen flux. © 2018, Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature.