Numerical analysis of effect of preheat and swirl of inlet air on temperature profile in canister burner

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to study the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) prediction on temperature distribution inside the canister burner with inlet air pre-heating of 100K and 250K while varying the swirl angle of the radial swirler. Air swirler adds sufficient swirling to the inlet flow to generate central recirculation region (CRZ) which is necessary for flame stability and fuel air mixing enhancement. Therefore, designing an appropriate air swirler is a challenge to produce stable, efficient and low emission combustion with low pressure losses. A liquid fuel burner system with different radial air swirler with 280 mm inside diameter combustor of 1000 mm length has been investigated. Analysis were carried out using four different radial air swirlers having 30°, 40°, 50° and 60° vane angles. The flow behavior was investigated numerically using CFD solver Ansys Fluent. This study has provided characteristic insight into the distribution of temperature inside the combustion chamber. Results show that with the inlet air preheat before the combustion, the temperature distribution inside the canister would stabilize early into the chamber with higher swirl number (SN) compared without inlet air preheat. As for the inlet air preheat, the main effects are the resulting temperatures in the canister are higher, but there is a smaller hot-spot in the flame. This means that the temperature profile in the chamber is well distributed.