Numerical Studies on Combustion Characteristics of a Hybrid Catalytic Combustor

하이브리드 촉매 연소기의 연소특성에 관한 수치적 연구

The hybrid catalytic(catalytic+thermal) combustor of a lean methane-air mixture on platinum catalyst was investigated numerically using a 2-D boundary layer model with detailed homogeneous and heterogeneous chemistries. For the more accurate calculations, the actual surface site density of monolith coated with platinum was decided by the comparison with experimental data. It was found that the homogeneous reactions in the monolith had little effect on the change of temperature profile, methane conversion rate and light off location. However, the radicals such as OH and CO were produced rapidly at exit by homogeneous reactions. Thus the homogeneous reactions were important to predict the productions of CO and NOx exactly. In thermal combustor, the production of $N_2O$ was more dominant than that of NO due to the relative important of the reaction $N_2+O(+M){\to}N_2O(+M)$. Finally the production of CO and NOx by amount of methane addition were studied.