Catalytic Combustion Characteristics of Hydrogen-Air Premixture in a Millimeter Scale Monolith Coated with Platinum

In the present study, catalytic combustion of hydrogen-air premixture in a millimeter scale monolith coated with Pt catalyst was investigated. As the combustor size decreases, the heat loss increases in proportion with the inverse of the scale of combustion chamber and combustion efficiency decreases in a conventional type of combustor. Combustion reaction assisted by catalyst can reduce the heat loss by decreasing the reaction temperature at which catalytic conversion takes place. Another advantage of catalytic combustion is that ignition is not required. Platinum was coated by incipient wetness method on a millimeter scale monolith with cell size of . Using this monolith as the core of the reaction chamber, temperatures were recorded at various locations along the flow direction. Burnt gas was passed to a gas chromatography system to measure the hydrogen content after the reaction. The measurements were made at various volume flow rate of the fuel-air premixture. The gas chromatography results showed the reaction was complete at all the test conditions and the reacting species penetrated the laminar boundary layer at the honeycomb and made contact with the catalyst coated surface. At all the measuring locations, the record showed monotonous increase of temperature during the measurement duration. And the temperature profile showed that the peak temperature is reached at the point nearest to the gas inlet and decreasing temperature along the flow direction.