Effect of heat addition on the electrogasdynamic flow and thermodynamic cycle efficiency

Highlights: • The geometry of an EGD converter is optimized. • The difference between internal heating and wall heat conduction is presented. • The cycle thermal efficiency increases with the increase in the amount of heat. - Abstract: Based on our previous work Chen and Chen (2015), to improve the direct energy conversion in the electrogasdynamic(EGD) converter, heat addition is proposed to change the expansion characteristics of the gas stream and the converter geometry is optimized to eliminate the energy loss resulted from the shock wave. Furthermore, a regeneration Brayton thermodynamic cycle integrating with the optimized EGD converter with heat addition is established. Firstly, the influence of heat addition on the two-phase flow of the gas and charged particles inside the EGD converter is studied numerically. The difference between internal heating and heat conduction through the walls of the EGD converter is presented. Secondly, adopting the simulated thermodynamic parameters of the EGD converter, the effect of the different methods of heat addition on the cycle thermal efficiency is analyzed based on the first law of thermodynamics. The results indicate that the decrease of the expansion ratio of the converter can significantly increase the charged particle velocity in the converter. Both wall heat conduction and internal heating can effectively change the characteristics of the two-phase flow and enhance the thermal efficiency of the developed thermodynamic cycle. Compared to the wall heat conduction, it is found that internal heating can more significantly improve the performance of the thermodynamic cycle.