KEEN | Spring 2020

Liquid-Fueled Micro-Combustors for Portable Power Generation

Combustion in microscales have received extensive interest in the past decade due to up to 100 times higher energy densities of hydrocarbon fuels as compared with those of the conventional batteries. Thus, there has been increasing interest in utilizing the high energy of hydrocarbon fuels in portable power generation systems. One method of generating electricity from hydrocarbon fuels is to use the heat from their combustion to drive endothermic reactions. However, up to date, there is no extensive research done with liquid fuels for augmenting hydrogen production. Most of the research projects with liquid-fuel micro and meso-combustors were performed as a fuel-lean combustion for propulsion applications. This research project focuses on fuel-rich liquid combustion, which can be used for fuel cells, UAV applications, and other portable power generation systems.