Design And Development Of A High Pressure Oxy-Methane Combustor

Most of the greenhouse gas emissions in the US comes from the electricity sector by burning fossil fuels. Environmental regulations have been implemented to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. One method to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere is oxy-fuel technology. One of the biggest challenges of oxy-fuel combustion is thermal management due to the elevated temperature combustion. The main objective of this Thesis was to design and develop a steady-state high pressure combustor that uses oxygen and methane with a thermal power input of 500 kW and operation at 20 bar pressure. An existing high-pressure combustor at UTEP was modified to meet the requirements by using both analytical and numerical analysis (FEA and CFD). To withstand the combustion temperatures, it was proposed that a high velocity ring of CO2 be injected along the inner walls of the combustion chamber. It was found through the CFD analysis that the injection of CO2 would effectively shield and maintain an allowable temperature at the inner walls of the combustor only for ¾ of the total length of the combustion chamber. To cool down the injector face and the end plates, an active water cooling solution was proposed