Séminaire FTC : Microgravity E-FIELD Flames on the ISS and Gas Hydrates for Combustion Research – Alice Yu-Chien

Yu-Chien (Alice)

Associate Project Scientist
Director of Lasers, Flames & Aerosols
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Irvine, CA USA

ABSTRACT:

Electric Field Effects on Laminar Diffusion Flames (E-FIELD Flames) is one of the Advanced Combustion via Microgravity Experiments (ACME) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The E-FIELD Flames experiment studies a hydrocarbon flame jet to determine how an electric field leads to an electric body force and a resultant ion-driven wind when the normal 1-g buoyant force is not participating in the process. The E-FIELD Flames experiment was boarded onto the international space station on March 14th, 2018 (\pi day) and was accomplished in November of the same year. The goal of the study is to expose the physico-thermo-chemical processes when an electric field is applied without gravitational effect. The results show that the flame is most compact at saturation while the measured voltage to current (VCC) curve demonstrates parabolic behavior after saturation which differs from observations in 1 g on Earth. The second part of the talk will briefly survey the current research developing in the Keck Foundation Deep Ocean Power Science Laboratory (DOPSL) and the Lasers, Flames & Aerosols Research Group (LFA) at UCI, including high pressure combustion experiments, water addition combustion, methane hydrate combustion, carbon dioxide hydrate fire extinguishment, and hydrogen/methane blending for optical diagnostics measurement.