Metal/Air batteries are considered to be promising electricity storage devices given their compactness, environmental benignity and affordability. As a commonly available metal, aluminum has received great attention s...Metal/Air batteries are considered to be promising electricity storage devices given their compactness, environmental benignity and affordability. As a commonly available metal, aluminum has received great attention since its first use as an anode in a battery. Its high specific energy (even better volumetric energy density than lithium) makes it ideal for many primary battery applications. However, the development of A1/Air cell with alkaline electrolyte has been lagged behind mainly due to the unfavorable parasitic hydrogen generation. Herein, we designed and constructed a novel A1/H_2/Air tandem fuel cell to turn the adverse parasitic reaction into a useful process. The system consists of two anodes, namely, aluminum and hydrogen, and one common air-breathing cathode. The aluminum acts as both the anode for the A1/Air sub-cell and the source to generate hydrogen for the hydrogen/air sub-cell. The aluminum/air sub-cell has an open circuit voltage of 1.45 V and the H_2/Air sub-cell of 0.95 V. We demonstrated that the maximum power output of aluminum as a fuel was largely enhanced by 31% after incorporating the H_2/Air sub-cell with the tandem concept. In addition, a passive design was utilized in our tandem system to eliminate the dependence on auxiliary pumping sub-systems so that the whole system remained neat and eliminated the dependence of energy consuming pumps or heaters which were typically applied in micro fuel cells.展开更多
A numerical investigation has been performed on supersonic mixing of hydrogen with air in a Scramjet (Supersonic Combustion Ramjet) combustor and its flame holding capability by solving Two-Dimensional full Navier-Sto...A numerical investigation has been performed on supersonic mixing of hydrogen with air in a Scramjet (Supersonic Combustion Ramjet) combustor and its flame holding capability by solving Two-Dimensional full Navier-Stokes equations. The main flow is air entering through a finite width of inlet and gaseous hydrogen is injected perpendicularly from the side wall. An explicit Harten-Yee Non-MUSCL Modified-flux-type TVD scheme has been used to solve the system of equations, and a zero-equation algebraic turbulence model to calculate the eddy viscosity coefficient. In this study the enhancement of mixing and good flame holding capability of a supersonic combustor have been investigated by varying the distance of injector position from left boundary keeping constant the backward-facing step height and other calculation parameters. The results show that the configuration for small distance of injector position has high mixing efficiency but the upstream recirculation can not evolved properly which is an important factor for flame holding capability. On the other hand, the configuration for very long distance has lower mixing efficiency due to lower gradient of hydrogen mass concentration on the top of injector caused by the expansion of side jet in both upstream and downstream of injector. For moderate distance of injector position, large and elongated upstream recirculation can evolve which might be activated as a good flame holder.展开更多
文摘Metal/Air batteries are considered to be promising electricity storage devices given their compactness, environmental benignity and affordability. As a commonly available metal, aluminum has received great attention since its first use as an anode in a battery. Its high specific energy (even better volumetric energy density than lithium) makes it ideal for many primary battery applications. However, the development of A1/Air cell with alkaline electrolyte has been lagged behind mainly due to the unfavorable parasitic hydrogen generation. Herein, we designed and constructed a novel A1/H_2/Air tandem fuel cell to turn the adverse parasitic reaction into a useful process. The system consists of two anodes, namely, aluminum and hydrogen, and one common air-breathing cathode. The aluminum acts as both the anode for the A1/Air sub-cell and the source to generate hydrogen for the hydrogen/air sub-cell. The aluminum/air sub-cell has an open circuit voltage of 1.45 V and the H_2/Air sub-cell of 0.95 V. We demonstrated that the maximum power output of aluminum as a fuel was largely enhanced by 31% after incorporating the H_2/Air sub-cell with the tandem concept. In addition, a passive design was utilized in our tandem system to eliminate the dependence on auxiliary pumping sub-systems so that the whole system remained neat and eliminated the dependence of energy consuming pumps or heaters which were typically applied in micro fuel cells.
文摘A numerical investigation has been performed on supersonic mixing of hydrogen with air in a Scramjet (Supersonic Combustion Ramjet) combustor and its flame holding capability by solving Two-Dimensional full Navier-Stokes equations. The main flow is air entering through a finite width of inlet and gaseous hydrogen is injected perpendicularly from the side wall. An explicit Harten-Yee Non-MUSCL Modified-flux-type TVD scheme has been used to solve the system of equations, and a zero-equation algebraic turbulence model to calculate the eddy viscosity coefficient. In this study the enhancement of mixing and good flame holding capability of a supersonic combustor have been investigated by varying the distance of injector position from left boundary keeping constant the backward-facing step height and other calculation parameters. The results show that the configuration for small distance of injector position has high mixing efficiency but the upstream recirculation can not evolved properly which is an important factor for flame holding capability. On the other hand, the configuration for very long distance has lower mixing efficiency due to lower gradient of hydrogen mass concentration on the top of injector caused by the expansion of side jet in both upstream and downstream of injector. For moderate distance of injector position, large and elongated upstream recirculation can evolve which might be activated as a good flame holder.