While heat of combustion is extensively used in large scale industrial applications for heat sources, it is difficult to utilize combustion-based heaters for middle or much smaller scale heating purposes since combustion is unstable in nature at smaller scales due to large surface-to-volume ratio. Instead, huge numbers of electric heaters are used in various industrial fields. A large quantity of electric energy consumption for mere heating purpose is not a good strategy in terms of effective energy usage.

For this, we have developed Swissroll microcombustor heaters with ±1℃ temperature controllability whereas it is combustion-based. Since gaseous hydrocarbon fuels are directly introduced into combustors, total thermal efficiencies of the heaters are twice or even larger compared with those of conventional electric heaters. Besides this, the microcombustor heaters can be operated in any atmospheres because it is sealed. They are advantageous of electromagnetic induction free as well. We have also succeeded in developing coin-size combustor.

Swiss-roll microcombustor in operation
(Diameter: 64 mm)

Coin size combustor
(Diameter: 20 mm)