Investigation of heat transfer characteristics of hydrogen combustion process in cylindrical combustors from microscale to mesoscale

In the field of micro and mesoscale combustion, the feature of flame-wall thermal coupling is of great significance because of its small scale nature. Thus, this work provides a comprehensive heat transfer analysis in cylindrical combustors from the perspective of numerical simulation. The combustor has a fixed length-to-diameter aspect ratio of 10, and the channel diameter is scaling up from 1 mm to 11 mm to explore the influence of chamber dimension on heat transfer and flame structure. The distribution of convective and radiative heat flux on inner surface, contribution of thermal radiation are given. Moreover, the role of radiation in flame structure is analyzed, and the convective and radiative heat losses are quantitatively analyzed. We find that radiative heat flux is smaller compared to convective heat flux, and the proportion of radiative heat flux becomes larger with an increasing diameter. Thermal radiation does not change the flame structure when the diameter is less than 3 mm. When the diameter is greater than 5 mm, thermal radiation changes the location of flame front. The heat loss becomes larger at a smaller diameter, and heat loss ratio can reach approximately 73.6% in the combustor with diameter of 1 mm. (c) 2021 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

In the field of micro and mesoscale combustion, the study provides a comprehensive heat transfer analysis in cylindrical combustors from the perspective of numerical simulation. The results show that the proportion of radiative heat flux increases with an increasing diameter, and thermal radiation can change the location of the flame front in larger diameter combustors.