Lacoste, Deanna A. | Search NASA

DOE OSTI2024

Quantifying the thermal effect and methyl radical production in nanosecond repetitively pulsed glow discharges applied to a methane-air flame

In this work, we investigated non-equilibrium plasma produced by nanosecond repetitively pulsed glow discharges applied across a lean premixed methane-air flame. The flame is stationary, axisymmetric, and laminar. The discharges are applied on the symmetry axis crossing the reactant gases, flame front, and product gases, allowing phase-locked averaged measurements and comparisons with axisymmetric numerical simulations. The thermal effect and methyl radical production are quantified in the discharge in the reactant gas region. One-dimensional, two-beam, hybrid, femtosecond-picosecond, coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering is used to acquire spatial and temporal profiles of temperature and oxygen-to-nitrogen concentration ratio. Photo-fragmentation laser-induced fluorescence is used to acquire quantitative two-dimensional profiles of methyl radicals in the discharge providing the first quantitative imaging of methyl produced ahead of a flame by plasma-induced methane dissociation. The spatial profiles of temperature and oxygen-to-nitrogen concentration ratio are in steady state, indicating that individual discharges have an insignificant heating effect. Upper and lower bounds of the produced mole fraction of methyl radicals in the plasma are obtained due to uncertainties in the collisional quenching rates of excited state methylidyne radicals in the plasma. The discharges produce a maximum of 600–1100 ppm of methyl radicals upstream of the flame front within 25 ns. This amount is similar to the predicted methyl mole fraction for the flame without plasma and thus represents a significant chemical perturbation to the reactants upstream of the flame front. The produced methyl follows an exponential decay in the first microsecond after the discharge with a decay constant of 8 µs close to the flame, and 0.8 µs further from the flame. The decay then deviates from the exponential curve and the methyl persists for tens of microseconds. The results suggest that for the tested configuration, the thermal effect of individual discharges through fast gas heating is negligible, while active chemical species are produced in large quantities in the reactant gases, upstream of the flame front.

hybrid fs-ps CARS↗

DOE OSTI2020

Spherically expanding flame in silane–hydrogen–nitrous oxide–argon mixtures

The effect of silane addition on the laminar flame speed ($S^0_u$) of flames propagating in hydrogen–nitrous oxide–argon mixtures has been investigated experimentally for the first time using the spherically expanding flame technique in a constant volume combustion chamber. Replacing hydrogen by silane and maintaining the equivalence ratio constant, much higher flame speeds, explosion peak pressures, and pressure rise coefficients were measured. A previously developed detailed reaction model has been updated based on ab initio thermodynamic properties calculations and collision limit violation analysis. The improved reaction model demonstrates encouraging performance in predicting the flame speed, with a mean absolute error below 11%. To explain the effect of silane addition on the flame dynamics, a number of parameters have been calculated including OH and H rate of production, heat release rate per reaction, and sensitivity coefficient on . The dynamics of freely propagating flames in SiH 4 –H 2 –N 2 O–Ar mixtures is essentially controlled by reactions of the H–O–N chemical system: N 2 O+H=N 2 +OH, OH+H 2 =H 2 O+H, and N 2 O(+M)=N 2 +O(+M). Whereas silane addition does not influence much the rate of production of OH, it significantly modifies that of H with a number of pyrolytic chemical pathways of silicon hydrides, such as SiH+H 2 =SiH 2 +H and Si+H 2 =SiH+H, which act as sink of H atom as they proceed in the backward direction. The reactions forming SiO(s) and SiO 2 (s), such as SiO+OH=SiO 2 (s)+H and 2SiO=2SiO(s), are exothermic and significantly contribute to the temperature increase. The adiabatic, constant pressure flame temperature for mixture containing silane is significantly higher, up to several 100’s K. The increase of induced by silane addition seems to be mostly related to the large increase of the flame temperature which leads to higher energy release rate.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗