Session RI2 - Applications of Low Temperature Plasmas.
INVITED session, Thursday afternoon, October 30
Brazos, ACC
It is well known that the application of an external electric field to a flame can affect its propagation speed, stability, and combustion chemistry (Lawton amp; Weinberg 1969). External electrodes, arc discharges, and plasma jets have been employed to allow combustible gas mixtures to operate outside their flammability limits by gas heating, injection of free radicals, and field-promoted flame stabilization (Yagodnikov amp; Voronetskii 1994). Other investigators have carried out experiments with silent electrical discharges applied to propagating flames (Inomata et al 1983, Kim et al 2003). These have demonstrated that the flame propagation velocity is actually decreased (combustion retarded) when a silent discharge is applied directly to the flame region, but that the flame propagation velocity is increased (combustion promoted) when a silent discharge is applied to the unburned gas mixture upstream of a flame. Two other recent works have considered the possibility of combustion enhancement in aircraft gas turbine engine combustor mixers by using a plasma-generating fuel nozzle, that employs an electric-arc or microwave plasma generator, to produce dissociated fuel or ionized fuel (Johnson et al 2001); and pulsed corona-enhanced detonation of fuel-air mixtures in jet engines (Wang et al 2003). In contrast to these prior works, we have employed a silent discharge plasma (SDP) reactor to break up large fuel molecules into smaller molecules and create free radicals or other active species in a gas stream before the fuel is mixed with an oxidizer and combusted.
In experiments reported here, a cylindrical SDP reactor was used to 'activate' propane before mixing it with air and igniting the combustible gas mixture. With the plasma, the physical appearance of the flame changes and substantial changes in mass spectrometer fragmentation peaks are observed (e.g., propane fragments decrease and water and carbon dioxide increase). This indicates that the combustion process is enhanced with the application of the plasma. Results of changes in the degree of combustion will be discussed in terms of variations in the plasma specific energy.