Executive Summary : | Ammonia, a carbon-free hydrogen carrier, has gained renewed interest due to its low boling point, ease of production, low costs, and high volumetric energy density. However, it also suffers from poor combustion characteristics such as low flammability and high NOx emissions. Trapped vortex combustors (TVCs) have been developed for flame stabilization in micro combustors for UAV applications and have shown promise for terrestrial power generation applications with alternative fuels like syngas (IGCC). TVCs consist of a physical cavity that stabilizes a flame under extreme ranges of overall equivalene ratios while leveraging the Rich burn-Quick quench-Lean burner (RQL) concept. The proposed work combines the advantages of ammonia as a fuel and the combustor concept of TVC. An atmospheric pressure single cavity trapped vortex combustor will be fabricated with provisions for supplying ammonia fuel and air as oxidiser. The mainstream flow will primarily consist of air and will be diverted into the cavity through a guid vane. Fuel is introduced in the cavity through injection holes and a mixture is formed due to the counter-clockwise rotating vortex. Preliminary flame stability experiments on the TVC rig will be conducted using PIV experiments, OH/NO PLIF technique, and numerical simulations of turbulent combustion with EDC model on the OpenFOAM code. Results will be compared with prior experiments, and exhaust measurements for NOx/NH3 and temperatures will be carried out. |