Plasma assisted combustion

Plasma-assisted combustion has recently gained renewed interest in the context of lean burning. Although lean combustion reduces the burn gas temperature and CO/CO2 content it leads, however, to less stable flames, and more difficult ignition. Short plasma discharges may counteract these effects, at a very low additional energy cost. In particular, Nanosecond Repetitively Pulse (NRP) plasma discharges have been proven to be efficient actuators to alter flame dynamics and facilitate flame stabilization while modifying the burning velocity.

First studies on the impact of NRP discharges on combustion focused on kinetic mechanisms and gas heating processes. Different models have been developed in 0D, but no kinetic scheme for plasma-assisted combustion has been proposed so far. More recently 1D and 2D simulations have been conducted. Very few studies included a self-consistent simulation of the NRP discharge for combustion applications, although it was shown that thermal and chemical effects of the NRP discharge on ignition are of the same order. Because of their high computational cost, detailed simulations of 3D real cases have never been performed and only simplified formulations for the plasma effects have been used.