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Effects of Air/H2O Discharge Plasma on Propane Combustion Enhancement Using Dielectric Barrier Discharges

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Abstract

Combustion provides about 80% energy for our daily life and industrial production. But thermal efficiency of traditional combustion technologies is low, which causes energy waste and serious environmental pollution. In order to improve the combustion efficiency, a combined method based on non-equilibrium plasma generated by dielectric barrier discharge and OH radicals coming from water-steam additive was proposed in this work, and plasma assisted propane combustion was examined and evaluated. The results indicated that when relative humidity (RH) was 20% and applied peak voltage was fixed at 8.75 kV, the relative intensity of OH radical and the flame temperature reached the maximum value at the flame root. At the same time, propane combustion was the most complete. In addition, we found that the erosion of the inner electrode was weakened by H2O addition, and the symmetry of discharge current was changed from symmetry to asymmetry with the increase of RH. Compared with the pure air undischarged combustion, when the relative humidity was 20% and under the discharge conditions of 8.75 kV, the lean-burn extinction limit was extended to 0.4,which is far lower than the traditional lean-burn limit (0.51).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their careful work and thoughtful suggestions that have helped improve this paper substantially.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemical Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Yanping Li

  2. School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Guanghui Niu & Xu Wang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Transient Optics and Photonics, Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics of CAS, Xi’an, China

    Jie Tang

  4. Research Center of Analytical Instrumentation, Key Laboratory of Bio-resource and Ecoenvironment, Ministry of Education, College of Life Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610064, China

    Yixiang Duan

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  1. Yanping Li
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  2. Guanghui Niu
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Correspondence to Yixiang Duan.

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Li, Y., Niu, G., Wang, X. et al. Effects of Air/H2O Discharge Plasma on Propane Combustion Enhancement Using Dielectric Barrier Discharges. Plasma Chem Plasma Process 38, 831–850 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11090-018-9896-0

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