Coal dust explosions can be hazardous; however, they can also generate a significant rise in stagnation pressure if adequately harnessed. Rotating detonation engine combustors seek to take advantage of the stagnation pressure rise phenomenon in a more sustained and controlled manner via confinement to a physical annulus, leading to increased overall thermodynamic efficiency. This investigation presents an analysis of detonations fueled by Carbon Black, a solid particulate consisting of virtually pure carbon molecules and lean Hydrogen-Air mixtures. As was previously realized with the addition of Carbon Black, an increase of operability limits and detonation velocities over that of a pure Hydrogen-Air interaction exist. For all testing conditions, the total equivalence ratio is held at f = 1, while the fuel mixture's carbon mass fraction is increased from 0 – 0.7. Total mass flow injected into the annulus remained constant (?0.415 kg/s). Detonation wave velocities are extracted from high-speed imaging through applying a Discrete Fourier Transform algorithm to determine changes to speed when Carbon Black particles are introduced. As a result, due to the addition of Carbon Black as an auxiliary fuel source, detonations were formed instead of deflagrations in operating conditions where one would expect deflagrations at the same Hydrogen-Air equivalence ratios without Carbon Black addition. The detonation formation provides evidence that the coal particles are reacting within the detonation wave in a large enough capacity to aid in forming and supporting a detonation wave within the annulus. The detonation wave velocities were found to decrease with hydrogen's incremental replacement with coal particles while maintaining a constant global equivalence ratio. Whereby, through a theoretical comparison of the heat of combustion as computed from the experimentally derived detonation wave velocities, a linear relationship of the two was shown to exist. Therefore, the heat of combustion has the potential to describe an operational limit to sustaining a detonation wave.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd2020-1495 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| Creators | Dunn, Ian |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- |
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