A modeling tool for household biogas burner flame port design

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the effectiveness of a newly developed tool aimed at optimizing the burner flame port design for household biogas-fired stoves. The tool consists of a multi-component simulation that incorporates three dimensional CAD designs with simulated chemical kinetics and computational fluid dynamics. An array of circular and rectangular port designs was developed for a widely available biogas stove (called the Lotus) as part of this study. These port designs were developed using suggestions and rules of thumb from previous literature. The three highest performing designs identified by the tool were manufactured and tested experimentally to validate tool output and to compare against the original Lotus burner. The experimental results aligned with the tool's prediction for two of the three new designs, each demonstrating improved higher thermal efficiency relative to the original. The results of the study indicate that designing for a targeted range of Reynolds number in the developed tool is a relevant way to improve flame port geometry. The study also demonstrated that the tool developed can accurately predict trends in thermal efficiency; emissions performance trends were found to be less reliable.