Power generation and heat sink improvement characteristics of recooling cycle for thermal cracked hydrocarbon fueled scramjet

In order to further investigate how much fuel heat sink could be increased and how much power generation could be obtained by using recooling cycle for a regeneratively cooled scramjet, the energy conversion from heat to electricity and the fuel heat sink increase in recooling cycle are experimentally investigated for fuel conversion rate and components of gas cracked fuel products at different fuel temperatures. The results indicate that the total fuel heat sink (i.e., physical+chemical+recooling) of a recooling cycle is obviously higher than the heat sink of fuel itself, and the maximum heat sink increment is as high as 0.4 MJ/kg throughout the recooling cycle. Furthermore, the cracked fuel mixture has a significant capacity of doing work. The thermodynamic power generation scheme, which adopts the cracked fuel gas mixture as the working fluid, is a potential power generation cycle, and the maximum specific power generation is about 500 kW/kg. Turbine-pump scheme using cracked fuel gas mixture is also a potential fuel feeding cycle.