Performance Study of Micro Combustor Utilising Nickel Based Catalyst on Alumina Foam Porous Support

Abstract

Alumina foam was utilised as a porous medium support for catalyst in a micro combustion process using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) as fuel. Through wet impregnation method, nickel was deposited onto the surface of alumina foam forming catalytic porous medium for micro combustion. In this study, the performance of micro combustion was investigated corresponding to three main factors based on the flame location, flue gas composition and the efficiency of combustion at lean combustion condition. It was found that combustion process started at ambient temperature produced low composition of SO2 and NOx for all experimental samples. Results also showed that combustion efficiency increases with the decrease in porosity of alumina foam used, whereby 22 % of porosity gives the highest combustion efficiency. Experiments with the deposition of active material nickel onto the alumina foam also produced similar results, where 22 % porosity of alumina foam gives the highest combustion efficiency. With nickel as active material deposited onto alumina foam, higher combustion efficiency can be achieved, with results from 40 % up to above 70 % combustion efficiency corresponding to the concentration of catalyst loading from 0.1 M to 1.0 M of Ni(NO3)2·6H2O preparation solution. Several advantages using catalytic combustion includes the capability in reducing the impact of thermal and radical quenching, easy start-up, robust to heat loss, low pollution gas emission, and operation at very lean air-to-fuel ratio condition. It has been found that the use of catalyst using porous alumina support can significantly increase the efficiency of combustion reaction and therefore improve the overall performance of micro combustion.