The electrical characteristics of an alternating current （AC） plasma igniter were investigated for a working gas of air at atmospheric pressure. The discharge voltage and current were measured in air in both breakdown and stable combustion processes, respectively, and the current-zero phenomena, voltage-current （V-I） characteristics were studied for different working gas flow rates. The results indicated that the working gas between anode and cathode could be ionized to generate gas discharge when the voltage reached 8 kV, and the maximum current was 33.36 A. When the current came to zero, current-zero phenomena appeared with duration of 2 #s. At the current-zero moment, dynamic resistance between electrodes became extremely high, and the maximum value could reach 445 kf~, which was the main factor to restrain the current. With increasing working gas flow rates, the gradient of V-I characteristic curves was increased, as was the dynamic resistance. At a constant driven power, the discharge voltage increased.
The effects of the airflow on plasma-assisted combustion actuator （PACA） characteristics are studied in detail. The plasma is characterized electrically, as well as optically with a spectrometer. Our results show that the airflow has an obvious influence on the PACA characteristics. The breakdown voltage and vibrational temperature decrease, while the discharge power increases compared with the stationary airflow. The memory effect of metastable state species and the transportation characteristics of charged particles in microdischarge channel are the dominant causes for the variations of the breakdown voltage and discharge power, respectively, and the vibrational temperature calculated in this work can describe the electron energy of the dielectric barrier discharge plasma in PACA. These results offer new perspectives for the use of PACA in plasma-assisted combustion.
A detailed study on the plasma-assisted combustion(PAC) characteristics of premixed propane/air mixture is presented. The PAC is measured electrically, as well as optically with a multichannel spectrometer. The characteristics are demonstrated by stable combustion temperature and combustion stability limits, and the results are compared with conventional combustion(CC). Stable combustion temperature measurements show that the introduction of PAC into combustion system can increase the stable combustion temperature, and the increment is more notable with an increase of discharge voltage. Besides, the rich and weak limits of combustion stability are both enlarged when plasma is applied into the combustion process and the increase of discharge voltage results in the expansion of combustion stability limits as well. The measurements of temperature head and emission spectrum illustrate that the kinetic enhancement caused by reactive species in plasma is the main enhancement pathway for current combustion system.
