Estudo do comportamento de descargas elétricas em misturas ar/metano

Abstract

This study aims the numerical modeling of electrical discharge in mixtures of air and methane, considering a two-dimensional model that involves a heat mass transfer, besides a discrete submodel of electronic distribution of collisions among several species in the mixture. The domain was divided into two regions, with and without discharge. The discharge region considers the effect of collisions with electrons, heat and mass transfer and chemical effects. Four simulations sets of discharge in mixture with dry air and another mixture with air and methane were executed. This study considers the air as incompressible formed by several species. To find the solution of the mathematical model, the finite difference method in a heterogeneous medium was applied; in addition, numerical techniques to split some operators of the equation were also adopted. Finally, the approximate solution of these models were obtained by a zero dimensional plasma analysis tool, ZDPlasKin. In the time domain, the Euler method, an explicit numerical scheme, was used. The electronic discharge was set 10% to the work scheme; and two types of gas mixture were analyzed, one representing a mixture of N2 _ O2 and another with methane and air. Results referring to the temperature profile in the domain in different time steps were analyzed, as well as the temporal variation of several species contained in the mixtures in some points of the domain. Due to the high computational cost demanded to solve some equation terms, a master-slave parallelization strategy through MPI (Message Passing Interface), a parallel programming API (Application Programming Interface) was used. The results ilustrated the heating and heat diffusion from discharge region to external region, and the diffusion of excited species generated from the discharge region to external region. The heating in external region occurred due to heat conduction and species diffusion generated in the discharge region (that diffunding through external region). This migration contributed to the heating of external region, since these species tending to de-excitation in region out of discharge.