Numerical Studies on Combustion Characteristics of a Hybrid Catalytic Combustor

The combustion characteristics of the hybrid catalytic(catalytic+thermal) combustor with a lean methane-air mixture on platinum catalyst were investigated numerically using a 2-D boundary layer model with detailed homogeneous and heterogeneous chemistries. for the more accurate calculations, the actual surface site density of monolith coated with platinum was decided by the comparison with experimental data. It was found that the homogeneous reactions in the monolith had little effect on the change of temperature profile, methane conversion rate and light off location. However, the radicals such as OH and CO were produced rapidly at exit by homogeneous reactions. The effect of operation conditions such as equivalence ratio, temperature, velocity, pressure and diameter of the monolith channel at the entrance were studied. In thermal combustor, the production of NO was more dominant than that of NO due to the relative importance of the reaction N+O(+M)→NO(+M). Finally the productions of CO and NOx by amount of methane addition were studied.