Characteristics of a disk MHD generator with inlet swirl

Abstract

Two kinds of experimental studies have been performed to know the effect of inlet swirl in a disk-type MHD generator. Firstly, we decreased stagnation temperature in order to simulate a poor inlet plasma condition. Inlet swirl provided relatively higher radial Hall voltage and much better performance even for lower stagnation temperatures compared with those for the simple radial flow case, mainly due to the contribution of Faraday e.m.f. U θ B. High enthalpy extraction level near 30% could be kept even for lower stagnation temperatures in the range of 1600–1700 K. Secondly, we decreased stagnation pressure to know generator performance under smaller pressure ratio of inlet to exit. Decrease of stagnation pressure improved enthalpy extraction very much unless the increase of static pressure and decrease of Hall field became significant. Highest enthalpy extraction ratio of 38.2% was successfully achieved. From considerations of momentum balance along the radial direction, positive inlet swirl has an important effect to reduce static pressure and also to reduce the unfavorable effect of Lorentz force. This suggests that introduction of inlet swirl is an influential way to reach high isentropic efficiency.