Research Goal

This project exploits the high-temperature microcombustors developed by my group to build high-temperature (> 700ºC) micro-chemical reactors.  Working in conjunction with colleagues in Chemical Engineering, we are building microscale reactors to produce hydrogen gas for PEM micro-fuel cells.  These systems make use of the high-energy density of NH3 in liquid form at room temperature at ~ 8.5 atm to drive the full system.  Several fundamental problems exist in how to microfabricate these systems, as well as to thermally isolate microscale structures at high temperatures.  Non-catalytic, spontaneous gas phase combustion within extremely small cavities has long been thought to be improbable. In a seed project with Rich Masel funded by DARPA ETO through DynCorp, we demonstrated that a hydrocarbonflame could be initiated and sustained within a microcavity, using an engineered materials combustor that we designed and fabricated. (MURI) 

Research Team:

Acknowledgement:

Work partially supported by NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center Grant #

Related Publications: