Afterburner

About: Afterburner is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 811 publications have been published within this topic receiving 5944 citations.

Power generation system in fuel cell

Abstract: A power generation system in a fuel cell having an air preheater for preheating air for a fuel cell reaction which will be fed to an afterburner of a high-temperature solid electrolyte type fuel cell, characterized by disposing, between the air preheater and the afterburner, a combustor for performing an additional combustion after the temperature of the air for the reaction has been elevated by the air preheater.

A Performance Study of a Super-cruise Engine with Isothermal Combustion inside the Turbine

Abstract: Current thinking on the best propulsion system for a next-generation supersonic cruising (Mach 2 to Mach 4) aircraft is a mixed-flow turbofan engine with afterburner. This study investigates the performance increase of a turbofan engine through the use of isothermal combustion inside the high-pressure turbine (High-Pressure Turburner, HPTB) as an alternative form of thrust augmentation. A cycle analysis computer program is developed for accurate prediction of the engine performance and a supersonic transport cruising at Mach 2 at 60,000 ft is used to demonstrate the merit of using a turburner. When assuming no increase in turbine cooling flow is needed, the engine with HPTB could provide either 7.7% increase in cruise range or a 41% reduction in engine mass flow when compared to a traditional turbofan engine providing the sane thrust. If the required cooling flow in the turbine is almost doubled, the new engine with HPTB could still provide a 4.6% increase in range or 33% reduction in engine mass flow. In fact, the results also show that the degradation of engine performance because of increased cooling flow in a turburner is less than half of the degradation of engine performance because of increased cooling flow in a regular turbine. Therefore, a turbofan engine with HPTB will still easily out-perform a traditional turbofan when even more cooling than currently assumed is introduced. Closer examination of the simulation results in off-design regimes also shows that the new engine not only satisfies the thrust and efficiency requirement at the design cruise point, but also provides enough thrust and comparable or better efficiency in all other flight regimes such as transonic acceleration and take-off. Another finding is that the off-design bypass ratio of the new engine increases slower than a regular turbofan as the aircraft flies higher and faster. This behavior enables the new engine to maintain higher thrust over a larger flight envelope, crucial in developing faster air-breathing aircraft for the future. As a result, an engine with HPTB provides significant benefit both at the design point and in the off-design regimes, allowing smaller and more efficient engines for supersonic aircraft to be realized.

Gasification/combustion system

Abstract: A gasification/combustion system (10) for the gasification/combustion of non-gaseous fuels with single or combinable oxidants and sulphur sorbants is described. The system (10) includes a rotary fluidized bed gasifier (12) for gasifying a non-gaseous fuel, the outlet of the gasifier (12) being connected to a gas turbine (14) through gas cleaners (46,50) for removing particles from the fuel gas, and an afterburner (16) for burning off the fuel gas to produce combustion gases for supply to a gas turbine (14). The system (10) also includes a steam cooling circuit which is provided to cool the fuel gas flow through system (10) and which includes a steam turbine (26). Embodiments of the system (10) are described with accompanying drawings.

Experimental and Numerical Study of a Turbulent Recirculation Zone with Combustion

Abstract: Recirculation zones are widely used for the stabilization of combustion in flows with a large velocity. The main example of this is the case of afterburner devices for turbojet engines, where the turbulent flame is stabilized by bluff bodies behind which recirculation zones occur. The prediction of the general shape of the flow field and of the temperatue field of these recirculating flows is of primary importance for the prediction of the “stability domain” of the burners. Two properties of the recirculation zone are of particular interest for combustion stabilization: its volume and the mass flow rate exchanged with the external flow. These two characteristics control the residence times of the fluid particles within the recirculation zone, which has to be large enough to ensure a good stabilization of the combustion.