Nonsteady-state processes in a plasma pilot for ignition and flame control

This paper deals with investigations of gas discharge in a recently developed plasma pilot for ignition and flame control. The characteristic features of this discharge burning mode are extremely low current (about 0.1 A) and low average power (less than 100 W). However, ignition and flame stabilization in a wide range of equivalence ratios for air-hydrocarbon mixtures are demonstrated. The physical mechanism of ignition is associated with the nonsteady-state properties of discharge. At the low current level, discharge burns in a kind of glow mode, and because of the glow-to-spark transition, the high-current nanosecond pulses are superimposed on the glow plasma background. Then spark discharge initiates combustion process, which is efficiently sustained in the glow plasma.