The influences of thermophysical properties of porous media on superadiabatic combustion with reciprocating flow

Abstract

AbstractThe influences of thermophysical properties of porous media on superadiabatic combustion with reciprocating flow is numerically studied in order to improve the understanding of the complex heat transfer and optimum design of the combustor. The heat transfer performance of a porous media combustor strongly depends on the thermophysical properties of the porous material. In order to explore how the material properties influence reciprocating superadiabatic combustion of premixed gases in porous media (short for RSCP), a two‐dimensional mathematical model of a simplified RSCP combustor is developed based on the hypothesis of local thermal non‐equilibrium between the solid and the gas phases by solving separate energy equations for these two phases. The porous media is assumed to emit, absorb, and isotropically scatter radiation. The finite‐volume method is used for computing radiation heat transfer processes. The flow and temperature fields are calculated by solving the mass, moment, gas and solid energy, and species conservation equations with a finite difference/control volume approach. Since the mass fraction conservation equations are stiff, an operator splitting method is used to solve them. The results show that the volumetric convective heat transfer coefficient and extinction coefficient of the porous media obviously affect the temperature distributions of the combustion chamber and burning speed of the gases, but thermal conductivity does not have an obvious effect. It indicates that convective heat transfer and heat radiation are the dominating ways of heat transfer, while heat conduction is a little less important. The specific heat of the porous media also has a remarkable impact on temperature distribution of gases and heat release rate. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res, 35(5): 336–350, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/htj.20120