メソスケールの渦流中における燃焼

抄録

Small scale combustors have received keen attention as a power source for portable devices. The vortex combustion is one of the key techniques to stabilize the flame in a narrow channel; in fact, small scale vortex combustors have been successfully developed for gaseous and liquid fuels. The developments of those small scale vortex combustors triggered fundamental studies on the flame behavior in small scale vortex flows. In this paper, results of the fundamental studies were introduced. In meso-scale vortex flow, it was found that a flame could propagate rapidly within the meso-scale tube by the vortex bursting mechanism, even when the tube diameter was close to the quenching diameter. Up to now, the flame propagation limits due to the vortex bursting mechanism were found to be greatly affected by the Lewis number effect. In this paper, the development of the practical power system with the thermo-electric device was also introduced. Utilizing the vortex flow combustor, the electric output 1.1W was obtained with the system which was several times larger than that of the catalytic combustor power system.