Over the past few years, micro-scale combustion has generally received a good consideration with the development of electronic-mechanical devices and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) in the following domains namely chemical analysis, civil and military aeronautics, astronautics, communication, biomedical but also environmental.
Indeed, aware of the promising type of easily transported energy device, various research studies have been done on the combustion characteristics and performance of micro-scale reactors. Thus, many advantages of micro-scale-combustor are known to be a good supplier of power by simplicity, for its long shelf life and for using an easy fuel replacement. For example, micro-scale reactors are capable to provide power adapted on various kind of hydrocarbons combustion for equipment such as drones, mobile-phones, mini-robots or small airplanes [1-3]. Due to the millimeter scale, we are faced to the tiny dimensions of the micro-scale reactor which make it difficult to maintain a stable flame on the contrary of the “traditional” reactor. Therefore, the arrangement solution suggested is to apply the reaction mechanism of methane-air mixture catalytic oxidation on platinum-coated on the surface wall in the micro-reactor. The heterogeneous reaction, preceding catalyst surface, produces chemical radicals and then, catalytically induced exothermicity. As a result, this way permits to trigger the homogeneous reaction inside the micro-channel. Understanding the process of micro-scale combustion mechanism is very important to the development of micro-power devices.
Being part of this movement, the objective of this thesis was to investigate the gas phase combustion characteristics inside a catalytic micro-channel depending on the effect of the high pressure conditions thanks to numerical simulations with heterogeneous and homogeneous chemistries of methane-air mixture reactions. The first results obtained with theses simulations will be presented in this document.

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