Study on a Lower Heat Loss Micro Gas Turbine Combustor with Porous Inlet

Abstract

A micro gas turbine combustor with a sintered porous chamber wall as inlet was tested and simulated. When burning methane in the 2.14 cm³ chamber volume combustor, its maximum power density reached 336 M W/m³. The combustion efficiency was above 90% when producing 850–1100 K exit gas. The pressure drop ratio of the porous inlet was below 5 kPa with 6 L/min premixed gas flow rate at hot condition. Compared with a conventional solid-wall micro combustor with heat recovery channel, the outside wall temperature of the porous-wall micro combustor decreased 150–200 K, and the heat loss ratio reduced from 40–80% to 20–40%. Direct numerical simulation based on the skeletal chemical kinetics model was used to elucidate the flame structure and heat loss reducing mechanism of the porous-wall micro combustor.

Keywords:

• Lower heat loss
• Micro gas turbine combustor
• Porous inlet

Additional information

Funding

The present work was supported by National Key Basic Research Program of China (2014CB239600), National Natural Science Foundation of China (51336010, 51176193), and the Strategic China–Japan Joint Research Program of NSFC-JST (50721140651).