Experimental investigation on heating kerosene using thrust tube waste heat of pulse detonation engine

Performance of liquid hydrocarbon fueled pulse detonation engines are hindered by the time required to evaporate liquid fuel droplets within the mixture. Efforts such as heating the liquid fuel before introduced into the engine were made to overcome this problem. The engine wall suffered high temperature of gaseous detonative products, which is harmful to the engine. Therefore the waste heat of PDE engine wall was used here to heat the liquid kerosene of the engine by using two concentric heat-exchangers with helical slot inside mounted at the tail of the pulse detonation engine. The pulse detonation engine (PDE) used here are 110 mm in inner diameter and 1700 mm in length and liquid kerosene and gaseous air were used as fuel and oxidizer respectively. Heating liquid kerosene was found effective in enhancing the engine performance, which was helpful for deflagration to detonation transition process. It was found that the waste heat could elevate the kerosene temperature effectively and the wall temperature could also be decreased obviously.