EAGER: Additively Manufactured Calibration Burner

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

1742743 Sanders For decades, researchers have used well-behaved laboratory burners to study high-temperature phenomena. These studies have enabled a better understanding of combustion, which in turn has promoted more efficient use of fuel worldwide. One of the most important laboratory burners is traditionally assembled from hundreds of hypodermic tubes in a painstaking manner that discourages burner surface areas much larger than 10 cm-square. Meanwhile, many researchers desire burners with surface areas of 100 cm-square or more to make new advancements. This project addresses this dilemma by attempting to fabricate appropriate burners in a new way, using additive manufacturing (also known as 3-D printing). Using 3-D printing, it is expected that burners with thousands of intricate internal channels can be produced affordably. Such burners will also be tested in a combustion chamber in this project. If successful, large affordable burners of this type will become accessible to many researchers. This development will be transformative by allowing unprecedented and widespread access to controlled high-temperature environments. Ultimately, numerous benefits will be possible, such as improved fuel efficiencies, improved reliability, and reduced pollution. The majority of this project will be carried out by an undergraduate researcher, offering an outstanding research experience. Specifically, in this project, the researchers will aim to design, procure, and test a small additively manufactured burner (AMB), followed by a large AMB. While some combustion devices have recently been fabricated with additive manufacturing, to date, no calibration burners have been fabricated this way. The AMB will operate on gas-phase fuel/oxidizer reactants such as methane/air. The surface areas of the two proposed AMBs will be approximately 10 cm-square and more than 100 cm-square, respectively. Large areas (100 cm-square or more) are critical because they offer increased signal-to-noise ratio and minimize confounding edge effects. The proposed large AMB will be at least 35 cm long, so that following this project, it can be used for collection of fundamental laser line-of-sight molecular absorption spectroscopy data with insignificant edge effect bias. The AMB will ultimately be useful for purposes such as calibration of optical and physical sensors, collection of fundamental spectroscopic data, and studies of gas- and solid-phase (soot and particulate) chemistry.