Energy efficiency improvement and emission reduction potential of domestic gas burners through re-orientating the angle and position of burner holes: Experimental and numerical study

Abstract

The trend towards enhancing the thermal performance of domestic cooking burners necessitates developing a new design for such devices. With this picture in mind, this paper numerically and experimentally investigates the effect of burner head design configurations on the energy efficiency and CO emission of domestic gas burners. The results of a three-dimensional steady-state computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is validated with the experimental data according to Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA) standard in cold start, hot start, and Simmer condition for two types of burners. Having the model validated, a step-by-step approach has been undertaken to improve the design of these reference cases, resulted in a total number of nine burner configurations analysed in this research. This is followed by determining the influence of introduced geometries on the thermal efficiency of burners. Based on the insights from the numerical model, the most efficient burner exhibits 3.3–22.2% higher thermal efficiency and 20.2–32.6% lower CO emission—depending on the gas flow rate—relative to the conventional burners. The optimised design can be implemented into existing burners with relatively little need for reconstruction. • Experimental and numerical study of natural gas combustion in domestic gas burners. • Experimental setup is designed to measure the thermal efficiency of typical burners. • A three-dimensional steady-state turbulent model is developed for numerical study. • Intense mixing induced by secondary effect improved the efficiency by 3.3–22.2%. • Optimum burner configuration lowered the carbon monoxide emission by 20.2–32.6%.