Experimental feasibility of tailored porous media burners enabled via additive manufacturing

Abstract

The advantages in performance and emissions from combustion within the voids of a porous material, as compared to those of conventional open-flame combustion, have motivated numerous studies to understand and harness the connection between the underlying porous structure topology and the desired system-level properties. The current study examines the feasibility and performance of additively manufactured complex ceramic structures with geometric functionalization to actualize novel porous media burner design concepts for enhanced performance. Smoothly graded porous structures are synthesized using triply periodic minimal surfaces and manufactured via lithography-based ceramic manufacturing. Experiments are performed on these structures to characterize flame stability, axial temperature profiles, and pressure drop for three different pore-scale topologies. These measurements are complimented by computational predictions from one-dimensional volume-averaged models. X-ray computed tomography was used to verify relevant geometric properties of the structures, as well as to examine the material after combustion. This work demonstrates the first smoothly graded burner, leveraging recent advancements in additive manufacturing to design, fabricate, and test the performance of burner concepts unattainable by traditional ceramic foam manufacturing techniques.