Improvement Design of an Existing Atomized Kerosene Stove for Better Performance

Abstract

 The existing atomized kerosene stove being used in some households in Nigeria does not give room for primary air fuel mixture but secondary one before combustion. This in turn leads to higher specific fuel consumption and ultimately lower thermal efficiency (resulting from low combustion efficiency) of the stove. In order to arrest this situation, there is a need to redesign the existing atomized kerosene stove. To this end, this work improved the existing atomized kerosene stove by making improvement design on its inlet unit through the introduction of primary air inlet in addition to the existing secondary air inlet and pre-mixing chamber at the throat with the limitation that the improvement does not take in to consideration the degree of mixing of air fuel mixture. The work tested the improved and the existing designs, the result of the test show that the improved design has a better thermal efficiency in a way of 70% compare to the existing design with thermal efficiency of 50%. Also the fuel consumption rate (SFC) of the existing design is 0.34 kg of fuel/kg of water evaporated while that of improved design is 0.30 kg of fuel/kg of water evaporated. It was concluded that the improved atomized kerosene stove is more thermally efficient and has an improved fuel consumption rate over the existing stove.

Keywords: Improvement design, atomized kerosene stove, combustion efficiency, specific fuel consumption