Energy Converter with Inside Two, Three, and Five Connected H2/Air Swirling Combustor Chambers: Solar and Combustion Mode Investigations

Angelo Minotti

doi:10.3390/en9060461

Abstract

This work reports the performance of an energy converter characterized by an emitting parallelepiped element with inside two, three, or five swirling connected combustion chambers. In particular, the idea is to adopt the heat released by H2/air combustion, occurring in the connected swirling chambers, to heat up the emitting surfaces of the thermally-conductive emitting parallelepiped brick. The final goal consists in obtaining the highest emitting surface temperature and the highest power delivered to the ambient environment, with the simultaneous fulfillment of four design constraints: dimension of the emitting surface fixed to 30 × 30 mm2, solar mode thermal efficiency greater than 20%, emitting surface peak temperature T > 1000 K, and its relative ∆T < 100 K in the combustion mode operation. The connected swirling meso-combustion chambers, inside the converter, differ only in their diameters. Combustion simulations are carried out adopting 500 W of injected chemical power, stoichiometric conditions, and detailed chemistry. All provide high chemical efficiency, η > 99.9%, and high peak temperature, but the emitting surface ∆T is strongly sensitive to the geometrical configuration. The present work is related to the “EU-FP7-HRC-Power” project, aiming at developing micro-meso hybrid sources of power, compatible with a thermal/electrical conversion by thermo-photovoltaic cells.

Highlights

The always-increasing energy demand imposes the investigation of new form of energy supply, which must match with some fundamental requirements, such as: (1) (2) (3) (4)Providing reliable and continuous base-load power; Providing peak-load power when needed; Being the “greenest” possible; andBeing tailored according to the different necessities.Renewable energies reply surely to the previous point 3, but their intermittent nature has a large impact in terms of low capacity factors, low flexibility, and amortization costs.Probably the only path to follow is, the integration of different technologies, in order to use them, separately or simultaneously, according to the actual necessities and conditions.The “HRC-Power” project (Hybrid Renewable energy Converter for continuous and flexiblePower production) aims at replying all the aforementioned requirements, integrating both combustion and solar concentration modes, into miniaturized items
A numeric-experiment comparison related to swirling combustion chambers [9]
This work focuses on the performance of an energy converter characterized by a parallelepiped This work focuses on the performance of an energy converter characterized by a parallelepiped block of emitting material with internal two, three, and five connected swirling micro-meso block of emitting material with internal two, three, and five connected swirling micro-meso chambers, chambers, fed by H2/air

Summary

Introduction

The always-increasing energy demand imposes the investigation of new form of energy supply, which must match with some fundamental requirements, such as: (1) (2) (3) (4). Providing reliable and continuous base-load power; Providing peak-load power when needed; Being the “greenest” possible; and. Being tailored according to the different necessities. Renewable energies reply surely to the previous point 3, but their intermittent nature has a large impact in terms of low capacity factors, low flexibility, and amortization costs. The only path to follow is, the integration of different technologies, in order to use them, separately or simultaneously, according to the actual necessities and conditions. Power production) aims at replying all the aforementioned requirements, integrating both combustion and solar concentration modes, into miniaturized items

Objectives

Results

Conclusion