Description
“Catalytic Microreactors for Portable Power Generation” addresses a problem of high relevance and increased complexity in energy technology. This thesis outlines an investigation into catalytic and gas-phase combustion characteristics in channel-flow, platinum-coated microreactors. The emphasis of the study is on microreactor/microturbine concepts for portable power generation and the fuels of interest are methane and propane. The author carefully describes numerical and experimental techniques, providing a new insight into the complex interactions between chemical kinetics and molecular transport processes, as well as giving the first detailed report of hetero-/homogeneous chemical reaction mechanisms for catalytic propane combustion. The outcome of this work will be widely applied to the industrial design of micro- and mesoscale combustors. Nomenclature Introduction Experimental setup Numerical models Experimental and numerical investigation of the hetero-/homogeneous combustion of lean propane/air mixtures over platinum Experimental and numerical investigation of a propane-fueled, catalytic, mesoscale combustor Hetero-/homogeneous combustion and stability maps in methane-fueled catalytic microreactors Stability of hetero-/homogeneous combustion in propane- and methane-fueled catalytic microreactors: channel confinement and molecular transport effects Numerical investigation on the start-up of methane-fueled, catalytic microreactors Conclusions Summary – Outlook
