Abstract
Diesel oil was used as the liquid fuel and the packed bed spheres were used as the porous medium. As different from the conventional open spray flame burner, the fuel was supplied dropwise to the top surface of the porous medium and burnt on the bottom side, where the swirling combustion air mixed with the fuel vapor. The pebbles, which were carefully chosen in the same size like the solid sphere homogeneously, had been adopted and used as the porous medium. The combustion behavior and the evaporation mechanism of the porous medium burner were investigated by measuring the profiles of temperature along the burner length as the axial temperature profile. The pollutant emission characteristics were also examined at the burner exit. The combustion, for the low emission of pollutants, was stabilized in the region of an equivalence ratio of 0.29 to 0.51 with the fuel input load of 4.01 to 5.11 kW. The effects of various parameters comprising equivalence ratio, fuel input load and porosity of the porous media on the combustion behavior were clarified. Practical applications and the future improvement of this type of the porous burner were also discussed.
