Investigation on thermal efficiency of LPG cooking burner using computational fluid dynamics

摘要

This study aims to propose a novel method in predicting the thermal efficiency of an LPG-energy saving burner (EB) using CFD data. The CFD data of the flow velocity and the combustion temperature distributions agree very well with the experimental data. The correlated data obtained from the experimental measurements and the numerical heat flux are then used to estimate the thermal efficiency of the EB. The effects of LPG released-pressure on its flow phenomena and thermal efficiency are investigated. Finally, the correlation equation to determine thermal efficiency is presented. It is found that the difference between the thermal efficiency obtained from this equation and one from the experimental data over the various range of LPG released-pressure is around ±2.41%. Besides, two improved versions of the EB burner, namely EB-W and EB-WT burners, are presented and evaluated numerically. The predicted thermal efficiencies obtained from both burners are 9.02% and 7.87%, respectively, higher than the original EB burner. These predicted thermal efficiencies agree well with the experimental results. Several validations confirm that the proposed method can be simply applied to evaluate and enhance the thermal efficiency of the burners.