An experimental and numerical study of flames in narrow channels with electric fields

The proceeding at: 14th International Conference on Micro and Nanotechnology for Power Generation and Energy Conversion Applications (PowerMEMS 2014). Took at 2014, November, 18-21, in Awaji Island, Hyogo Japan. The event Web site in: http://powermems2014.org/The advancement of microscale combustion has been limited by quenching effects as flames cease to be much smaller than combustors. The long studied sensitivity of flames to electrical effects may provide means to overcome this issue. Here we experimentally and numerically investigate the potential of electric field effects to enhance combustion. The results demonstrate that, under specific conditions, externally electric fields will sustain combustion in structures smaller than the quenching distance. The analysis proposes a reduced mechanism to model this result and provides a study of the governing parameters. We find good qualitative agreement between the model and experiments. Specifically, the model is found to successfully capture the capacity to increase and decrease flame speed according to electric field magnitude and direction. Further, in both experiments and computations the sensitivity to electrical enhancement increases for more energetic mixtures. We do find that the model underpredicts the maximum achievable speed enhancement observed, suggesting that additional phenomena should be included to expand the range of conditions that can be studied.Publicad