Patent attributes
A method of and system for air-fuel injection for stable combustion in fuel combustors. It provides rapid mixing, continuous ignition and stable combustion under very fuel-rich and very fuel-lean conditions, mixtures that may even be beyond flammable limits. The rapid and intimate mixing are achieved by sizing, orienting and operating fuel and air orifices such that the reactant streams directly impinge, and the velocity head in the fluid in greater supply, in multiple orifices, is higher than the velocity head of the other reactant stream, by a factor of two (2) to five (5). The continuous ignition is achieved by preheating air to temperatures sufficiently high such that the resulting air-fuel mixture, after impingement and mixing, is above the fuel autoignition temperature. The stable combustion is achieved by designing the controlling orifice pressure drops and stream inertances to be higher for the reactant that is in short supply, relative to stoichiometric mixtures, such that a combustion chamber over-pressure causes the injected mixture ratio to move toward stoichiometric, in the direction of higher combustion temperatures and lower product densities. Under fuel-rich conditions the reactant in short supply is the air, and under fuel-lean conditions the reactant in short supply is the fuel. Appropriate ratios of these pressure drops and inertances are determined by dynamic analysis of potential modes of feed system-coupled combustion instability.
