Author(s)

D. Y. Jiang, W. M. Yang, N. Aqdas, K. J. Chua

Department of Mechanical Engineerings, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

Micro-combustion research works are motivated by development of portable, autonomous power generators such as the micro TPV with improvement in energy density over batteries. Heat recuperation is a technique which contributes to better energy efficiency performance by recovering heat from the exhaust gas. In this paper, a numerical simulation is carried out to study the impact of incorporating recuperation on the performance of micro modular combustor system. The simulation results have been validated by experiments; achieving close agreement between simulated and experi-mental data. It was observed that the mean wall temperature, radiation power and emitter efficiency markedly improved with the incorporation of a heat recuperator. In addition, 25.8% enhancement of total radiation power and 30.6% emitter efficiency could be realized when the hydrogen air equivalence ratio was 0.9.

Modular Micro Combustor; Recuperation Temperature Distribution; Emitter Efficiency

Jiang, D. , Yang, W. , Aqdas, N. and Chua, K. (2012) Evaluating the Energy Efficiency Performance of a Micro Combustor with and without Heat Recuperation. Open Journal of Energy Efficiency, 1, 21-30. doi: 10.4236/ojee.2012.12003.