A numerical study comparing the performance of a self-aspirating domestic LPG porous burner and that of a conventional LPG burner

The study involves in the design of a domestic two-layer self-aspirating porous burner that operates at a thermal load of 1 kW using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). The porous burner is intended to function within India’s standard domestic regulator fuel inlet pressure of 3000 Pa. For the same thermal load, this work also provides a numerical comparison between the domestic conventional burner and the designed porous burner. For both porous and conventional burners, a full-scale 3D model is developed to calculate the flow, combustion, heat transfer to the cooking vessel, thermal efficiency, and emissions. The combustion process of both burners is numerically computed using a detailed chemical kinetic mechanism of LPG combustion, the San Diego Mechanism (SDM) with 57 species and 268 reactions are used. The porous burner is simulated using a non-thermal equilibrium condition to better calculate the heat recirculation within the porous domain. The self-aspirated porous burner has an equivalence ratio ϕ of 0.75 at 1 kW and an efficiency of 84.2%; conventional burner at the same load had an efficiency of 68%. 10 and 6 parts per million (ppm), respectively, are the measured CO and NOx emissions from the domestic porous burner and 660 and 80 ppm for domestic conventional burner, respectively.