Electric field effects on chemi-ionization in droplet burning

The effects of an externally applied field are studied for a single isolated droplet flame under the spherically symmetric 1-D configuration. A reduced 3-step chemical kinetic mechanism is proposed to capture the production and destruction of ions inside the flame, which is then used for conducting analytical and numerical investigations. Large activation energy asymptotics were used to study the flame structure in the absence of the external field. The effect of the electric field is modelled using the Ionic Wind and Ohmic Heating. Furthermore, two distinguished limits of weak and strong field are studied to understand the charge redistribution in both cases. Based on the numerical results, an increase in the mass burning rate is observed with increasing potential. However, maximum flame temperature doesn't seem to be effected with the external field. Ohmic Heating effects are used to explain these observations