Combustion performance of a domestic cooker burner at different design parameters and fuels

Abstract

In this study, an a typical domestic cooker-burner was investigated numerically using parametrical research to observe the effects of four different fuels. Propane, natural gas, hydrogen, and biogas (three different compositions) were used in the simulations. Sixteen design parameters were examined for comparison, including four different fuel inlet pressures and four different fuel channel diameters. Simulation results were validated with experimental results and compared to each other. The comparison among all cases was given visually and graphically as emissions, temperatures, and efficiencies. In the mentioned pressure range, propane cases have shown almost independent behavior concerning the change in diameters, except for 0.25-mm-diameter cases. Furthermore, the temperature drop on the cooker's bottom surface was observed at all pressure levels for natural gas and propane, with an increasing supportive fuel channel diameter after 0.30 mm in general. As predicted for the biogas cases, lower flame temperatures have been observed from visual Computational Fluid Dynamics results compared to the other gases due to their low calorific value. While unburnt hydrocarbons and CO emission levels were observed to be the highest for natural gas, NO appeared to be the highest, approximately three times higher than the average NO emissions of all fuel types for hydrogen among those of other fuels. Also, a higher average cooker bottom temperature, approximately 8% higher than the average surface temperature of all fuel types, was obtained for natural gas. Higher efficiency, about 50% higher than the average efficiency of all fuel types, was obtained for hydrogen fuel. Moreover, results showed that supportive fuel channel diameter was the most effective parameter for NO emissions.