Effects of Infrared Radiant Coating on Ceramic Porous Media Combustion Using Simulated Natural Gas and Air Mixture

Porous media combustion (PMC) shows many advantages over free flame combustion, and it is one of the best ways to convert fossil fuel energy to heat. The infrared radiant coating (IRC), which can reduce heat loss and improve thermal efficiency, has been massively investigated during past two decades and applied in industrial heating widely. In principle, the proper coating on porous media can improve infrared radiant emission. Continued from our former researches, we experimentally investigated the effects of IRC on ceramic PMC by choosing composite of (50 wt%MnO2 + 30 wt%Fe2O3 + 10 wt%CuO + 10 wt%Co2O3) as coating material after reference investigation. Comparative experiments between base-line and IRC ceramic PMC are carried out for syngas/air mixture, whose properties and heat value are similar to natural gas, under different firing rate FR = 300 kW/m2-800 kW/m2 and different equivalent ratio phi = 0.6-0.9 within lean combustion regime. Results indicate that, the IRC ceramic PMC shows many distinguished characteristics in accelerating combustion process, enhancing maximum radiation efficiency by 4 %-6% and further improving energy/thermal efficiency, changing pollutants emission, and increasing the crisis of flame flashback. These findings can help promotion of PMC performances.