Faculty:

Prof. Robert Dibble, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California
Prof. André Boehman, Director of the Combustion Laboratory

Objective:

To understand the impact of the level of unmixedness on emissions formation during catalytically stabilized combustion.

Approach:

Prof. Dibble's group has performed experimental studies of the effect of unmixedness on hybrid combustor behavior. In collaboration with Prof. Dibble's group, a model has been constructed that considers the effect of the monolith supported catalyst on a fuel-air mixture with temporal (time varying) unmixedness but spatial (radial) uniformity of composition and the subsequent behavior of the gas phase combustion zone downstream of the monolith. The combined model (monolith + PFR) is used to predict overall NO_x formation across the hybrid combustor.

Results:

To date, the simulations are only partly successful. As shown below, the uncatalyzed combustion calculations match the experimental observations quite well. But, for the catalytically stabilized combustion, the agreement is not as good.