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 cm3 chamber capacity was 20–200 W at equivalence ratio Ф = 0.6. Though the flame temperature was above 1000 °C, the combustor’s wall temperature was near 600 °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 150 W input power at Ф = 0.7, the system produced 10 V output at open circuit and 4 V at 10 Ω load. The maximum power output was above 2 W, and the maximum overall chemical-electric energy conversion efficiency was 1.25%.