Experimental study of a plat-flame micro combustor burning DME for thermoelectric power generation

A centimeter magnitude thermoelectric (TE) power generation system based on a plat-flame micro combustor burning DME (dimethyl ether) has been developed. The chamber wall of this micro combustor was made of two parallel sintered porous plates which acted as mixture inlet. The main virtue of this combustor is that it can keep combustor wall at lower temperature for reducing heat loss when sustaining a stable flame. Experimental test results showed it was feasible to obtain stable DME/air premixed flame at lean combustion situations in the micro combustor. The combustion load of this 0.48 cm(3) chamber capacity was 20-200W at equivalence ratio phi = 0.6. Though the flame temperature was above 1000 degrees C, the combustor's wall temperature was near 600 degrees C lower than flame temperature. In the demonstrated TE power generation system which integrated the plat-flame micro combustor, a heat spreader had good effect on uniforming the hot side temperature field of TE modules. Cooled by water and with 150W input power at phi = 0.7, the system produced 10 V output at open circuit and 4 V at 10 Omega load. The maximum power output was above 2 W, and the maximum overall chemical-electric energy conversion efficiency was 1.25%. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.