Methane-Air Plasma-Assisted Ignition Excited by Nanosecond Repetitively Pulsed Discharge: Numerical Modeling and Effect of Inert Gas

Abstract

Plasma-assisted ignition and combustion are promising approaches for controlling ignition enhancement and flame stabilization. The global loosely coupled plasma-assisted combustion kinetic model has been established by combining the ZDPlasKin and ChemKin codes, which is employed to numerically investigate the effects of the inert gas-diluted methane-air nanosecond repetitively pulsed (NRP) plasma on the ignition process. The results indicate that addition of the inert gas is conducive to increasing the chemical reactive species densities in the methane-air NRP discharge plasma. The addition of inert gases affects the generation pathways of plasma species and their corresponding contribution rates. Compared with the methane-air plasma, the dilution of inert gases shows obvious effects on reducing ignition delays, and the dilution of He and Ar decreases the ignition delays by 58.0 and 84.0%, respectively. CH3+ O2= CH3O + O and H + O2= O + OH are the dominant conducive reactions in the methane-air ignition chemistry. Moreover, the dilution of inert gases has considerable influences on the normalization sensitivity coefficients, especially for the reaction of H + O2= O + OH.