Well Stirred Reactor

The well stirred reactor is part of the SFB 686 'Modellbasierte Regelung der homogenen Niedertemperaturverbrennung' (Model-based control of low-temperature homogeneous combustion). It is used to investigate the low-temperature combustion characteristics of gaseous fuels (Methane, DME) and to implement newly developed model based controllers.

The well-stirred reactor is a small 0.1 liter quartz glass sphere, in which four jets inject the fuel-dilutant-oxygen mixture to create an homogeneous mixture. The components can be mixed idependetly from one another to create mixtures ranging from very lean to very rich, and a dilution from 70 to 95%. The reactor is placed inside an oven to control the ambient temperature (up to 1200K). A separate heater is placed inside the reactor to control the inlet temperature. The flue gases exiting the reactor can be analyzed by our in-house GC-MS system. Fast sampling of the gas temperature inside the reactor, coupled with a fast FID-Sensor (HFR 500 from Cambustion) deliver the data for the model based controller.