Effects of Presence of Impurities on Non-Equilibrium MHD Power Generation Incorporating Fossil Fuel-Fired Heat Exchanger

A theoretical analysis has been conducted to gain an insight into the effects brought on the non-equilibrium MHD gas properties and on the performance characteristics of a non-equilibrium MHD generator by the presence of impurities introduced into the potassium-seeded argon working gas from the fossil-fuel-fired heat exchanger adopted for heating the gas. Propane is envisaged as fuel, and as typical operating condition, the working gas is assumed to have a stagnation temperature of 2,000 K, stagnation pressure of 5 atm, Mach number of unity, and seed fraction of 10−3. The gas enters a Faraday-type MHD generator with infinitely finely segmented electrodes operating at a loading factor of 0.75 in a magnetic field of 5 T subject to ionization instability. The results of computation reveal that the presence of impurities below certain limits in a range of roughly 10 to 100 ppm at the entrance of the generator (exact limit depending on the operation condition) will not prevent the MHD generator from operating ...