Fan Ejector

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Chemical Engineering & Processing: Process Intensification 160 (2021) 108295

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process


Intensification
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cep

Numerical study of an integrated miniature ejector for catalytic


micro-combustors
Guangyao Yang , Aiwu Fan *
State Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: In the present study, an integrated micro-ejector was proposed to provide a mixture of n-butane and air for
Miniature ejector micro-combustors. The effects of fuel jet velocity and geometrical parameters of the ejector on the entrainment
Micro-combustor ratio were numerically investigated and theoretically analyzed. The results show that the incoming air mixes
Entrainment ratio
with the fuel jet flow through two routes. The entrainment ratio increases with an increasing fuel jet velocity due
Negative pressure
Geometrical parameters
to the increased magnitude of negative pressure. Moreover, increasing the nozzle diameter leads to a sharp
decrease in the entrainment ratio. However, the entrainment ratio can be drastically augmented by increasing
the diameter of the mixing section. In addition, an increase in the length of mixing section will slightly decrease
the entrainment ratio of the ejector. Furthermore, increasing the total area of air inlets gives rise to a drastic
decrease in the entrainment ratio. These variation tendencies have a close relationship with the negative pressure
contours. The findings of this study provide a guidance to the optimal design of this kind of micro-ejectors.

1. Introduction surface area of micro combustors. Karagiannidis et al. [7] and Kaisare
et al. [8] numerically studied the catalytic (Pt) combustion of CH4 and
Nowadays, various micro-electro-mechanical-systems are constantly C3H8 in micro-reactors, respectively. They confirmed that the flame
emerging. It is urgent to develop more reliable and convenient portable stability limits of catalytic micro-reactors were wider than the coun­
energy sources with high power density. As is well known that con­ terparts of for non-catalytic systems. Moreover, they found that catalytic
ventional electrochemical batteries have short duration, long recharging micro-burners can operate with much more insulating materials and can
time, low specific energy and environmental pollution. In contrast, hy­ operate with lower wall temperatures. Sitzki et al. [9] and Ahn et al.
drocarbon fuels such as liquid butane possess a much higher energy [10] applied catalytic combustion into micro Swiss-roll combustors,
density and the fuel tank is easy and fast to be recharged [1,2]. Hence, which revealed that flame can be sustained at very small flow rate of
combustion-based power generators are one of the promising alterna­ fuel/air mixture. Norton and Vlachos [11] reported that H2 addition can
tives to batteries in the near future. For this, micro- and meso-scale assist the self-ignition of C3H8/air mixtures in catalytic micro-burners.
combustion has gained extensive attention in past decades. Chen et al. [12] demonstrated that hydrogen reaction in a
To date, premixed combustion in micro- and meso-scale combustors micro-channel can be enhanced by catalyst segmentation. Li et al. [13]
have been widely investigated. A variety of flame instabilities were improved the flame stability in a small-scale reactor with catalyst seg­
found through both experimental study and numerical simulation, such mentation and cavities.
as flashback, extinction, blow-out, and repetitive flame dynamics [3–5]. Using liquid fuels for micro- and meso-scale power generators is
It is pointed out that the drastically increased heat loss ratio and more preferable since they have higher specific energy (kW/kg) than
shortened residence time of gaseous mixture are the main reasons for the gaseous fuels. Some pioneer works have been conducted by the groups
frequent occurrence of flame instabilities. Fortunately, many ap­ led by Dunn-Rankin [14,15] and Kyritsis [16,17]. For example, William
proaches were proposed to improve the flame stability for micro- and et al. [14] developed a miniature liquid-fuel-film (methanol) burner in
meso-scale premixed combustion, which have been summarized in a 2002. Differing from spray combustion that occurs in small volumes, the
recent review article [6]. One of the most effective flame stabilization fuel is flowed in a wall film so that it can reduce heat losses, inhibit
technologies is applying catalyst, which can make full use of the large quenching and make full advantage of the large surface-to-volume ratio

* Corresponding author at: 1037 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, 430074, China.


E-mail address: faw@hust.edu.cn (A. Fan).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cep.2020.108295
Received 24 November 2020; Received in revised form 20 December 2020; Accepted 27 December 2020
Available online 2 January 2021
0255-2701/© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
G. Yang and A. Fan Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process Intensification 160 (2021) 108295

Fig. 1. Schematic of the prototype ejector.

for fuel evaporation. Later, Li et al. [15] proposed an improved design


Table 1
that has double chambers and central porous fuel inlet. Kyritsis et al.
Dimensions of the prototype ejector.
[16–18] developed a novel meso-scale combustor for power generation
based on kerosene-type fuels like JP8. Their design combined two Dimension Value/mm
techniques of multiplexed electrostatic fuel spraying and catalytic D0 3.8
combustion. The results demonstrated that this system can burn cleanly D1 0.1
and efficiently with a combustion efficiency of >97 %. Chen et al. [19] D2 2.2
D3 1.38
experimentally investigated the diffusion flame characteristics of liquid D4 1.38
ethanol issued from mini tube nozzles. They observed an explosive flame L1 0.6
with sound emission, which was induced from violent evaporation such L2 4.5
as explosive boiling. Gan et al. [20] compared the diffusion ethanol δ 0.07
flames of free jet and confined jet. It was shown that the confined jet
flame has a higher flame temperature and a shorter length due to the In most cases of the aforementioned works, the nozzle and the main
reduced heat loss and enhanced diffusion process. Gan et al. [21,22] body of ejectors are separated, with the air inlets surrounding the nozzle.
further investigated the electro-spraying behaviors and stable flames This kind of structure will make the whole system relatively compli­
were observed under combined electric fields. cated. In the present study, we proposed an integrated miniature ejector
From the above literature, we can see that the frequently used liquid to supply n-butane/air mixture for micro- and meso-scale catalytic
fuels in micro- and meso-scale combustion are methanol, ethanol, and combustors. This type of ejector is usually applied in wind-proof lighters
JP8, etc., which remain liquid state under atmospheric pressure. To burn burning n-butane as the fuel. Numerical investigation was conducted to
those fuels efficiently and stably, electro-spraying technology is usually explore the influences of jet velocity and structural parameters on the
necessary. Syringe pump and high-voltage electric field are required to entrainment ratio of the ejector. Theoretical analysis was performed in
achieve these goals, which make the whole power generation system the discussion of the numerical results.
more complicated and less reliable. Therefore, liquid fuels which can
automatically realize their gasification under atmospheric pressure will
2. Numerical method
avoid these issues. N-butane has a saturated vapor pressure of 0.24 MPa
at room temperature, which is convenient and safe for storage and
2.1. Geometric model
usage. On the other hand, for a complete combustion in miniature sys­
tems, air supply is a crucial issue. Passive ventilation scheme would be
Fig. 1 is the schematic of the prototype ejector used in this study. The
preferable to active air supply in simplifying the whole system, elimi­
dimensions of each part are given in Table 1. The fuel jet enters into the
nating noise emission and reducing self-power consumption. Hence, an
ejector through a micro-scale nozzle, which results in the entrainment of
ejector would be a good choice to obtain a mixture of evaporated fuel
ambient air into the ejector through two holes (i.e., air inlets). For the
with ambient air.
convenience of later discussion, we call the front section of the ejector
As a common fluid device, ejector has a simple structure and no
“suction section”, as indicated in Fig. 1. The gaseous butane and air will
moving part, which makes it widely used in various industrial and res­
be fully mixed when they pass through the “mixing section”. Finally, the
idential fields [23], such as refrigeration cycle [24,25] and aircraft en­
mixture leaves the ejector through the exit and enters into a micro-scale
gines [26]. The performances of ejectors are mainly determined by their
combustor (not shown). The origin of the coordinates is set at the
geometrical parameters [27–31] and operating conditions [32]. In
starting of the nozzle axis.
addition to the conventional ejectors, micro ejectors have also been
developed by several groups [33–36]. Satoh et al. [33] and Tanaka et al.
[34] manufactured a 2D micro-ejector by deep reactive ion etching 2.2. Mathematical model
(DRIE) of silicon wafers as the fuel-air feeding device for
micro-combustors. Fan et al. [35] designed a 3D axially symmetric We first estimate the value of the Knudsen number, Kn=Lg/Lc, where
micro-ejector to reduce the friction effect and they achieved a largest Lg is the mean free path of gas and Lc is the characteristic scale of the
entrainment ratio of 43 using butane as the fuel jet. Gardner et al. [36] ejector. The order of magnitude of Kn is 10− 5 for the n-butane/air
used steam ethanol and nitrogen as the jet fluids and found that a larger mixture, which is much less than the critical value of 10-3. So, the
area ratio can increase the entrainment ratio. Navier-Stokes equations are applicable to this study. The flow mixing
process of butane and air can be described by continuity equation,

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G. Yang and A. Fan Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process Intensification 160 (2021) 108295

Fig. 2. Mesh generation of the prototype model (Note: the wall thickness is
not considered).
Fig. 4. Comparison of calculated entrainment ratios and experimental
data [32].

2.3. Computation scheme

The Reynolds number of the fuel jet under investigation is within


1000–8000, which varies with the jet velocity and nozzle diameter.
Hence, we chose the standard k-ε turbulence model for calculation. The
steady-state model was used to simulate the steady flow in the ejector.
The boundary conditions were specified as follows. Uniform concen­
tration and velocity distributions of n-butane at 300 K were set for the
nozzle entrance. Pressure-inlet and pressure-outlet were set for the air
inlets and ejector exit, respectively. The walls were set to be adiabatic
because heat transfer process was ignored in our simulation.
The 3D geometry of the ejector was modeled in ICME software and
unstructured grids were used to mesh the models, as illustrated in Fig. 2
for the prototype. Because heat transfer process was not considered in
the numerical simulation, the wall thicknesses were neglected, namely,
all the solid walls were not meshed in Fig. 2. The flow process was
simulated by FLUENT6.3. A second-order upwind scheme was adopted
to discretize convective terms. The “SIMPLE” algorithm was employed
to decouple the pressure and velocity. The grid-independency was
Fig. 3. Profiles of Y-component of air velocity along the axis of air inlets.
checked by using three sets of grid system, i.e., 79325, 580,641, and
1,743,255 elements. The profiles of Y-velocity along the central axis of
momentum conservation equation and species transport equation. air inlets are plotted in Fig. 3, which demonstrates that when the number
Continuity: of grid elements is above 580,641, the curves are almost overlapped
div(ρu) = 0 (1)
Momentum:
∂p
div(ρuu) = − + div(μgradu) (2)
∂x

∂p
div(ρvu) = − − g + div(μgradv) (3)
∂y

∂p
div(ρwu) = − + div(μgradw) (4)
∂z
Species:
div(ρYi u) = div(Dim gradYi ) (5)

where u is the velocity vector; u, v and w are the velocity components in


x, y and z directions, respectively; p is static pressure and Yi is mass
fraction of species i; ρ, μ and Dim are density, kinetic viscosity and
diffusivity of species i, respectively.

Fig. 5. Effect of fuel jet velocity on the entrainment ratio and outlet velocity.

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G. Yang and A. Fan Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process Intensification 160 (2021) 108295

Fig. 6. Negative pressure contours in the X-Y cross section under different fuel jet velocities.

with each other. Therefore, 580,641 grids are sufficient to capture the predicted entrainment ratios is in consistent with that of experimental
flow characteristics. The convergence of numerical simulation was results. Moreover, the relative error is less than 12.5 %. Therefore, the
judged based on the residuals of all governing equations to be less than numerical results have an acceptable accuracy.
1.0 × 10− 6.
3. Results and discussion

2.4. Model validation 3.1. Effect of fuel jet velocity on the entrainment ratio

To verify the accuracy of the numerical scheme, we compared the Fig. 5 shows the entrainment ratio and outlet velocity of the ejector
calculated entrainment ratio (defined as the ratio of inhaled air flow rate under different fuel jet velocities. It can be seen that the entrainment
to the fuel jet flow rate) of the ejector presented in [30] with their ratio exhibits a monotonic increase trend with an increasing fuel jet
experimental data, as shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen that the tendency of

Fig. 7. Air streamlines in the X-Y cross section under different fuel jet velocities.

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G. Yang and A. Fan Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process Intensification 160 (2021) 108295

negative regions existing before the mixing section, which are created by
the fuel jet flow. Moreover, the magnitude of negative pressure grows
larger as the fuel jet velocity is increased. This implies that the air
entrainment ability of fuel jet becomes stronger at high fuel jet velocity,
as demonstrated in Fig. 5.
Fig. 7 depicts the air streamlines under the fuel jet velocity of
V = 10 m/s, 30 m/s, 60 m/s and 90 m/s. It is interesting to observe that
the incoming air mixes with the fuel flow through two routes, as indi­
cated by the orange and blue streamlines, respectively. The orange and
blue streamlines are divided by whether a streamline will be inhaled
into the front cavity of the suction section. Meanwhile, it is evident that
the orange streamlines are denser than the blue ones, which means that
the air is inhaled largely through the orange routine. This is because the
magnitude of negative pressure in the vicinity of the nozzle exit is much
larger than that in other areas. However, it is also noted that at
V = 10 m/s, there are two large vortexes located at the right-hand side of
the air inlets, where a large amount of air will leak out again from the
ejector. Obviously, this is one of the main reasons for the small air
entrainment ratio under low fuel jet velocity (Note: Another reason is
Fig. 8. Variation of the entrainment ratio with the nozzle diameter under the small magnitude of negative pressure near the nozzle exit). On the
different fuel jet velocities. other hand, no vortex is formed in the corners on both sides of the nozzle
in this case. As the fuel jet velocity is increased, the size of the vortexes
velocity. Specifically, the entrainment ratio increases more rapidly when that near the air inlets decreases significantly and disappears at
the fuel jet velocity is relatively low, and slows down at high fuel jet V = 90 m/s. At the meantime, two small vortexes appear in the corners
velocity. This means that the entrainment ratio can be significantly that near the nozzle, which indicates that the ability of air entrainment
enhanced by increasing the fuel jet velocity when it is below 50 m/s. On becomes stronger at large fuel jet velocity. Consequently, the air
the other hand, it is noted that the outlet velocity increases almost lin­ entrainment ratio increases monotonically with an increasing fuel jet
early with the fuel jet velocity. Moreover, the outlet velocity are much velocity, as have been demonstrated in Fig. 5.
larger than the laminar burning velocity of stoichiometric n-butane-air
mixture (⁓0.4 m/s). Therefore, in order to sustain a stable combustion, 3.2. The impacts of geometrical parameters of the ejector on the
the diameter of downstream combustor should be several times greater entrainment ratio
than that of the ejector. In the following, we will analyze the pressure
field and velocity field to discuss the effect of fuel jet velocity on the The entrainment ratio not only depends on the fuel jet velocity, but
entrainment ratio. also is associated with the geometrical parameters of the ejector. In the
Fig. 6 illustrates the negative pressure contours in the X–Y cross following sub-sections, we will examine the impact of each geometrical
section under the fuel jet velocity of V = 10 m/s, 30 m/s, 60 m/s and parameter on the entrainment ratio, including the nozzle diameter, the
90 m/s. It is clearly seen from Fig. 6 that there are two symmetric diameter and length of the mixing section, and the number and total
area of air inlets. In each case, except for the variable parameter, all the

Fig. 9. Negative pressure contours in the X-Y cross section under different nozzle diameters at V = 60 m/s.

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G. Yang and A. Fan Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process Intensification 160 (2021) 108295

Fig. 10. Entrainment ratio calculated by Eq. (6), η, versus that by numerical
simulation, ηNum.

Fig. 11. Variation of the entrainment ratio and equivalence ratio at the ejector
exit with the diameter of mixing section under V = 60 m/s.

rest are kept to be identical with those of the prototype ejector.

3.2.1. Effect of nozzle diameter on the entrainment ratio Fig. 12. Negative pressure contours in the X-Y cross section under different
To investigate the influence of nozzle diameter on the entrainment mixing section diameters at V = 60 m/s.
ratio, we chose seven values for the nozzle diameter, i.e., D1 = 0.1, 0.13,
0.15, 0.17, 0.19, 0.21 and 0.25 mm, respectively. The variation of through the second routine and also slow down the flow of fuel-air
entrainment ratio with the nozzle diameter under different fuel jet ve­ mixture. Hence, the air entrainment ratio will be decreased as the
locities are shown in Fig. 8. First, it is seen that for the same nozzle nozzle is enlarged.
diameter, the entrainment ratio increases with the increase of fuel jet In order to provide a guidance for the ejector design, we obtained an
velocity, which is consistent with that demonstrated in Fig. 5. However, empirical correlation for the entrainment ratio, which is a function of
it can also be seen from Fig. 8 that for a fixed jet velocity, the entrain­ nozzle diameter and fuel jet velocity, as shown in Eq. (6):
ment ratio declines sharply with the increase of nozzle diameter. For
example, when V = 100 m/s, as the nozzle diameter is increased from η = D−1 0.951 (0.0051V + 2.068) (6)
0.1 mm to 0.25 mm, the entrainment ratio decreases by 56 %.
The prediction accuracy of Eq. (6) has been verified by a comparison
In order to analyze the influence of nozzle diameter on entrainment
with the numerical results, as shown in Fig. 10. It is evident that all the
ratio, the negative pressure contours under D1 = 0.1 mm, 0.15 mm,
data fall within the two error lines of +10 % and -10 %, which confirms
0.19 mm and 0.25 mm at V = 60 m/s are shown in Fig. 9. Because the
that the prediction by Eq. (6) has an acceptable accuracy.
volumetric fuel flow rate is proportional to the square of nozzle diam­
eter, both the magnitude and area of the negative pressure contours will
3.2.2. Effect of the diameter of mixing section on the entrainment ratio
be drastically increased, extending to the mixing section when
In this section, the influence of the mixing section diameter, D3, on
D1>0.1 mm. More importantly, the pressure gradient in the mixing
the entrainment ratio is studied. Nine values of D3 are selected for
section is positive under D1>0.1 mm, which will retard the air suction
comparison, i.e., D3 = 1.38 mm, 1.5 mm, 1.6 mm, 1.7 mm, 1.8 mm,

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G. Yang and A. Fan Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process Intensification 160 (2021) 108295

Fig. 14. Variation of the entrainment ratio with the length of mixing section.

Fig. 13. Air streamlines in the X-Y cross section under different mixing sec­
tion diameters.

1.9 mm, 2.0 mm, 2.2 mm and 2.8 mm. The numerical results of the
entrainment ratio and equivalence ratio at the ejector exit for various
mixing section diameters under V = 60 m/s are shown in Fig. 11. It is
obvious that the entrainment ratio increases almost linearly with the
increase of the mixing section diameter. The empirical correlation be­
tween the entrainment ratio and the mixing section diameter can be
expressed through Eq. (7). Moreover, it is noted that when D3 = 2.8 mm,
the entrainment ratio reaches up to 32.05, which can satisfy the
requirement of entrainment ratio for a complete combustion of n-butane
in air. Accordingly, the equivalence ratio at the ejector exit drops from
around 2.4 to 0.98.
η = 13.716D3 − 5.769 (7)
Fig. 15. Negative pressure contours in the X-Y cross section under different
Figs. 12 and 13 respectively illustrate the negative pressure contours mixing section lengths at V = 60 m/s.
and air streamlines in the X–Y cross section under different mixing
section diameters (D3 = 1.38, 1.8 and 2.2 mm) at V = 60 m/s. It can be
seen that with the increase of mixing section diameter, both the area and

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G. Yang and A. Fan Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process Intensification 160 (2021) 108295

Fig. 16. Comparison of the entrainment ratios of ejectors with dual and four air
inlets under different fuel jet velocities.

magnitude of negative pressure contours increase significantly.


Accordingly, as the mixing section diameter is increased, the vortexes at
the right hand side of the air inlets disappear and the air influx via the
second route is increased. Meanwhile, as the mixing section diameter is
increased, the wall thickness will be reduced, which implies that the
flow path of incoming air will be correspondingly decreased. Conse­
quently, the entrainment ratio can be notably augmented under a large
diameter of the mixing section.

3.2.3. Effect of the mixing section length on the entrainment ratio


The entrainment ratios under six different lengths of the mixing
section, i.e., L2 = 3, 4, 4.5, 5, 6 and 7 mm, are presented in Fig. 14. In
these cases, the fuel jet velocities are the same of V = 60 m/s. Fig. 14
demonstrates that the entrainment ratio decreases gradually with the
increase of the mixing section length, roughly in a linear manner, as
expressed in the empirical correlation Eq. (8). The coefficient of this
empirical function is -0.663, which means the decrease of entrainment
ratio is relatively slow. To be specific, when the length of mixing section
is increased from 3 mm to 7 mm, the entrainment ratio decreases from
22.7–20.13 with an extent of 11.3 %.
η = − 0.663L2 + 24.6 (8)
Fig. 15 depicts the negative pressure contours in the X–Y cross sec­ Fig. 17. Comparison of the negative pressure contours of ejectors with dual
tion under different mixing section lengths (L2 = 3 mm, 4.5 mm and and four air inlets.
6 mm) at V = 60 m/s. It can be seen from Fig. 15 that the increase in the
mixing section length has only a slight impact on the suction section, slightly less than that of “Model A”. These facts demonstrate that
whereas it has a more obvious influence on the mixing section. To be increasing the total area of air inlets exerts a significant negative effect
specific, as the mixing section length is increased, the contour of zero on the entrainment ratio.
pressure moves upstream accordingly (i.e., the positive pressure To elucidate the underlying mechanism responsible for the above-
gradient increases). As a result, the air suction ability is weakened and mentioned phenomenon, the negative pressure contours of these three
the entrainment ratio of the ejector declines. models are drawn in Fig. 17. Comparing Fig. 17c with 17 a, it can be
found that when the area of air inlets is increased, the magnitude and
3.2.4. Effect of the number and total area of air inlets on the entrainment gradient of negative pressure contours are significantly reduced when
ratio both the number and total area of the air inlets are increased. This leads
The influences of the number and total area of air inlets on the to a sharp decrease in the entrainment ratio of “Model C”. If we compare
entrainment ratio are explored in this section. For comparison, we Fig. 17b with 17 a, it is seen that the magnitude of negative pressure
choose two other models with four perpendicular air inlets, named contours of “Model B” is even larger than that of the prototype “Model
“Model B” and “Model C” to distinguish from the prototype “Model A”. A”. However, the entrainment ratio of “Model B” is still a little smaller
“Model B” has the same total area of air inlets with that of “Model A” than that of “Model A”. This is because under the condition of un­
whereas “Model C” has a doubled total area of air inlets. Fig. 16 shows changed total area of air inlets, increasing the number of air inlets will
the comparison between the entrainment ratios of the three models reduce their diameters, which leads to a slight increase in the length of
under different fuel jet velocities. Unexpectedly, for an identical fuel jet the mixing section. Refer to section 3.2.3, the entrainment ratio will be
velocity, the entrainment ratio of “Model C” is much lower than that of reduced when the mixing section length is increased.
the prototype “Model A”, while the entrainment ratio of “Model B” is

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G. Yang and A. Fan Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process Intensification 160 (2021) 108295

obtain a bigger entrainment ratio. To further confirm this fact, the


negative pressure contours under V = 90 m/s are shown in Fig. 19. It is
demonstrated that the magnitude of negative pressure of DME is smaller
than that of n-butane. As a result, the entrainment ratio of DME is lower
than the counterpart of n-butane.

4. Conclusions

In the present work, the performance of an integrated micro-ejector,


which was designed to provide a mixture of n-butane and air for micro-
combustors, was numerically studied. The entrainment ratios of the
prototype ejector under various fuel jet velocities were investigated. In
addition, the influence of each geometrical parameter of the ejector was
explored. The underlying mechanisms for the numerical results have
also been discussed. The main findings of this study were summarized
below.

(1) The incoming air mixes with the fuel flow through two routes,
which can be divided by whether a streamline is inhaled into the
Fig. 18. Comparison of the entrainment ratio variation of n-butane and DME
former part of the suction section.
with fuel jet velocity. (2) The entrainment ratio increases with an increasing fuel jet ve­
locity due to the increased magnitude of negative pressure.
(3) The most effective parameters to promote the entrainment ratio
are the diameters of the nozzle and the mixing section. Specif­
ically, reducing the nozzle diameter or increasing the mixing
section diameter can augment the entrainment ratio drastically.
(4) Changing the length of mixing section has a slight effect on the
entrainment ratio of the ejector.
(5) Increasing the total area of air inlets leads to a drastic decrease in
the entrainment ratio.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Guangyao Yang: Methodology, Writing - original draft, Visualiza­


tion, Investigation. Aiwu Fan: Supervision, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foun­


dation of China (Grant Number: 51576084).

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