抄録
The 5-Watt class microcombustor which has a sintered porous catalytic layer has been developed. In order to obtain monolithic porous fine structure, catalyst colloidal paste of platinum is painted inside the narrow tube and then it is sintered with rich methane-air mixture. The combustor with the present catalytic layer can work in wide ranges of equivalence ratio and mixture flow rate with methane fuel. The continuous combustion time has recorded 1300 hours. The exhaust gas temperature is about 1100K, and the combustion efficiency is about 90%. By coupling with Bi-Te thermoelectric modules, the combustor can convert a part of thermal output to electricity as a micro-cogenerator, which generates 164mW electricity with the fuel supply of 5.47W. It corresponds to final conversion efficiency of 3.00%, and the specific energy is 417Wh/kg, which is 2.5 times as large as that of Li-ion batteries.
