Author: Zhiguo Qu (Xi'an Jiaotong University) - This study presents a 150-kW ammonia-fueled power generation system integrating an ammonia decomposition reactor, ammonia burner, and hydrogen-enriched internal combustion engine (ICE). A three-stage cascaded thermal management strategy is implemented to recover waste heat from exhaust gases, reactor endotherms, and ICE cooling circuits. Subsystem models are validated against published experimental data. ICE output and system energy efficiency demonstrate a nonlinear bell-shaped dependence of power output (peak: 137.8 kW in 169.2 kg/h) and energy efficiency (maximum: 16.6% in 151.2 kg/h) on ammonia flowrate in the standard split ratios. The ammonia conversion ratio and critical component temperatures are analyzed with changing ammonia flowrate. Particle swarm optimization of ammonia split ratios between the burner and decomposition reactor in different ammonia flowrate. After optimization, the energy efficiency is improved from 16.2% to 25.8% and the power output rise to 218 kW in ammonia flowrate of kg/h. The proposed framework advances scalable ammonia-based power solutions by addressing key challenges in heat integration, dynamic load response, and multi-objective operational optimization.
