A Study of Combustion Characteristics by Using Ethanol Water Solution

-Especially Reduction of Combustion Products for Swirl Burner

Abstract

In recent years, ethanol has attracted attention as an environmentally friendly substitute fuel because of exhaustion of petroleum resources and environmental issues. Previous studies have revealed that it is possible to perform continuous combustion at a wide range of air ratio for low concentration ethanol, by atomizing and burning an ethanol water solution using a swirl burner. It is also clear that low NO_x can be realized even in experiments in which the fuel flow rate is constant regardless of the fuel concentration. In this study, we examined the influence of the supplied fuel flow rate on exhaust gas temperature and exhaust components (especially CO emissions) of the swirl burner. The exhaust gas temperature is measured in combustion chamber and exhaust pipe by using K type thermocouples. The main conclusions are as follows:1) Under the high air ratio condition, the flame length decreases with increasing the fuel flow rate. 2) Under the condition of E60 at λ=1, CO emissions decrease as the fuel flow rate increases. 3) CO emissions increase with increasing the fuel flow rate at any ethanol concentration. 4) Exhaust gas temperature monotonically decreases with increasing the air ratios at any fuel flow rate.