Visualization of instantaneous structure and dynamics of large-scale turbulent flames stabilized by a gliding arc discharge

Abstract

A burner design with integrated electrodes was used to couple a gliding arc (GA) discharge to a high-power and large-scale turbulent flame for flame stabilization. Simultaneous OH and CH2O planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) and CH PLIF measurements were conducted to visualize instantaneous structures of the GA-assisted flame. Six different regions of the GA-assisted flame were resolved by the multi-species PLIF measurements, including the plasma core, the discharge-induced OH region, the post-flame OH region, the flame front, the preheat CH2O region and the fresh gas mixture. Specifically, the OH profile was observed to be ring-shaped around the gliding arc discharge channel. The formaldehyde (CH2O) was found to be widely distributed in the entire measurement volume even at a low equivalence ratio of 0.4, which suggest that long-lived species from the gliding arc discharge have induced low-temperature oxidations of CH4. The CH layer coincides with the interface of the OH and CH2O regions and indicates that the flame front and the discharge channel are spatially separated by a distance of 3–5 mm. These results reveal that the discharge column acts as a movable pilot flame, providing active radicals and thermal energy to sustain the flame. High-speed video photography was also employed to record the dynamics of the GA-assisted flame. This temporally resolved data was used to study the ignition and propagation behaviors of the flame in response to a temporally modulated burst-mode discharge. The results indicate that turbulent flame can be sustained by matching temporal parameters of the high-voltage bursts to the extinction time of flame.