Exergetic efficiency analysis of hydrogen-air detonation in pulse detonation combustor using computational fluid dynamics

Exergy losses during the combustion process, heat transfer, and fuel utilization play a vital role in the analysis of the exergetic efficiency of combustion process. Detonation is thermodynamically more efficient than deflagration mode of combustion. Detonation combustion technology inside the pulse detonation engine using hydrogen as a fuel is energetic propulsion system for next generation. In this study, the main objective of this work is to quantify the exergetic efficiency of hydrogen-air combustion for deflagration and detonation combustion process. Further detonation parameters are calculated using 0.25, 0.35, and 0.55 of H2 mass concentrations in the combustion process. The simulations have been performed for converging the solution using commercial computational fluid dynamics package Ansys Fluent solver. The details of combustion physics in chemical reacting flows of hydrogen-air mixture in two control volumes were simulated using species transport model with eddy dissipation turbulence chemistry interaction. From these simulations it was observed that exergy loss in the deflagration combustion process is higher in comparison to the detonation combustion process. The major observation was that pilot fuel economy for the two combustion processes and augmentation of exergetic efficiencies are better in the detonation combustion process. The maximum exergetic efficiency of 55.12%, 53.19%, and 23.43% from deflagration combustion process and from detonation combustion process, 67.55%, 57.49%, and 24.89%, are obtained from aforesaid H2 mass fraction. It was also found that for lesser fuel mass fraction higher exergetic efficiency was observed.