Performance evaluation of ejector with different secondary flow directions and geometric properties for solid oxide fuel cell applications

The mixing chamber length, secondary flow tube inclination angle, diffuser length and diverging angle as well as the direction of secondary flow on the ejector performance are numerically studied. The numerical results of 2560 different design points including the all combinations of the selected parameters indicate that the selected ejector geometric parameters have a great impact on the ejector performance. Within the parameter ranges considered, the best performance based on steam to carbon ratio and the entrainment is obtained from the ejector having a mixing chamber length of 30 mm, secondary flow tube inclination angle of 45°, diffuser length of 90 mm and diffuser diverging angle of 5°, regardless of the secondary flow direction. On the other hand, the parallel flow ejector, where the anode exhaust line flow direction is designed to be parallel to the primary flow direction, is found to exhibit slightly higher steam to carbon ratio and entrainment ratio compared to those of the counter flow ejector. Furthermore, it is seen that the parallel flow ejector can offer wider ranges of the ejector geometric parameters considered for a high performance whereas relatively rigid geometric parameters need to be selected for designing a counter flow ejector.