Advanced Diagnostics in Plasma Assisted Combustion

Due to its effect on the climate and the environment, combustion of fossil fuels has become an important concern for power generation gas turbines and aeronautical engines. Increasingly rigorous emissions restrictions on polluting species such as NOx have led these industries to develop lean combustors. This technology allows the flame to burn at a lower temperature and leads to lower emission of NOx molecules. However, lean burn engines suffer from flame instability and lean blown-out. This requires the development of new methods to achieve stable lean combustion and to delay the lean-blowout limit. One possible way to improve flame reactivity is Plasma Assisted Combustion (PAC). The basic mechanism of PAC consists of delivering a pool of reactive species to the flame front which promotes faster reaction pathways bypassing other slower combustion chemical reactions. Adding a relatively small amount of electric energy to a flame results in important improvement of the laminar flame speed and flame stability. However, the fundamental mechanisms leading to combustion enhancement using PAC are still not well understood and require advanced diagnostics in well controlled experiments in order to quantify the effect of the key parameters leading to the reported enhancement. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Jeffrey Bergthorson

Student:

Partner:

École Centrale Paris

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Education

University:

McGill University

Program: