Abstract
Keeping up with the rapid growing technology and meeting its power demands, compact and portable devices are desired. Electrochemical batteries currently satisfy these standards. However, micro-combustion has advantages over lithium-ion batteries. Micro-combustion can produce a higher power density, higher heat and mass transfer coefficients, as well as shorter recharge duration. Utilizing hydrocarbons as a fuel in micro-combustion could lead to the possibility of applying this technology towards aerospace and/or defense. The reduction in size and its components would greatly benefit areas of weight and cost. With the decrease in size of micro-combustion offers a larger surface-to-volume ratio but also leads to flame quenching and short residence time. Sustaining combustion requires additional methods such as heat-recirculation and porous inert media. Micro-combustor design with a total volume of 1188 mm3 was validated. Mass flow rate of premixed fuel/air entered the system at an axial velocity of 2.0 m/s. This design was set forth with power production of 100 Watts. Computational fluid dynamic studies with ANSYS 13.0 Workbench help simulate the fluid flow in the proposed models. The numerical methods and algorithm calculated fluid dynamics and heat transfer. By varying the inner annulus wall to converge, power increase as much 13% was simulated. The pressure, temperature, and velocity also increased as the heat loss of the total system decreased by sixth of a fraction. With the variants of the angle draft annulus wall creating a compressor affect could lead to further research to be applied to aerospace and defense technologies