The effects of radiation heat transfer on catalytic combustion

The impact of radiation heat transfer on heterogeneous catalytic oxidation of a fuel on a flat plate is studied. The boundary layer equations are solved numerically for an adiabatic plate. The important nondimensional groups are identified and the results are presented over wide ranges of all these parameters. The results show that depending on other parameters, even small plate emissivitives can significantly alter the results. In general, radiation heat loss increases the ignition distance and ignition delay time and also lowers the plate temperature, while an energy addition by radiation results in the opposite trends.