Burnin'

"How do you burn, when you don't know how to burn?"

I've forgotten the number of times the professor has told me this, but the outcome of asking a (more or less) fundamental question like this, he tells me, is this: (Taken today, at the workshop)

That's how it starts. You should see where it goes from there, though:

That is what it looks like. You're probably thinking that's the ceramic glowing red hot.
It's not:

The reddish tinge at the boundary in the above picture- now that's thermal radiation from the ceramic/surrounding steel. The interior is a mystery for now.

Notice, among other things, that the background seems progressively darker in the above photos. (Check the first one again.) That happened because I was trying to get the best out of my low dynamic range camera- and had to change the settings for each shot to keep the burner region from appearing saturated. In short, that thing is bright. It hurts to look at it.

But what is it?


It gets hotter/better.


And better!


And that's not even at full power.
At full power, the photographs I took were ruined and failed to capture the high dynamic range.

Again, what is it?

That's a story for another time. (If, that is, the reader is even marginally interested in knowing about critical Peclet numbers and volumetric combustion)

For now, though, feast your eyes on this: (A small layman-ish explanation included.)

Document 1 on porous burners

Document 2 on porous burners