Carmen Guerra-Garcia
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA·Engineering·Early-career
Cutting carbon dioxide and other pollutants from engines and power plants, including aircraft engines, will take cleaner ways to burn fuel. One option is to burn fuel 'lean', with extra air.
- Fields
Engineering
Physics
Chemistry
- Topics
plasma-assisted combustion
nanosecond repetitively pulsed plasma
NRP discharges
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2029
What they work on
- Develop numerical models of one-dimensional plasma-assisted flamelets to predict how nanosecond pulsed plasmas change laminar flame speed and extinction strain rate for ammonia, hydrogen and methane blends.
- Test whether the gains plasma gives in lean blowout limit and in suppressing combustion oscillations in swirl-stabilized burners can be predicted from its effect on fundamental flame properties.
- Map operating conditions where plasma actuation minimizes nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, using parametric studies on the 1D flamelet models rather than only extending the lean blowout limit.
- Extend the one-dimensional picture by studying how higher-dimensional flame effects shape plasma-assisted stabilization and emissions.
More about the research
Lean flames are cleaner but can become unstable or blow out. They can also be hard to sustain with carbon-free fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia. Plasma-assisted combustion (PAC) uses very short electrical pulses to make an ionized gas that helps hold a flame steady. Earlier work showed that nanosecond repetitively pulsed plasmas can keep lean hydrocarbon and ammonia flames burning and calm their instabilities. However, it is still unclear how PAC affects nitrogen oxides (NOx), since the plasma itself can make NOx. It is also unclear how small-scale results carry over to full-size burners.
Why it matters
Better plasma-assisted combustion could help aircraft engines and power systems burn carbon-free fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia stably, while keeping nitrogen oxide pollution low. Replacing trial-and-error testing with rules based on flame properties may make it easier for engine makers to scale the technology up.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Omid Samimi Abianeh
Wayne State University, MI·Engineering
Measure flame propagation speed of ammonia–dimethyl ether blends across a wide range of temperatures, pressures, fuel-to-air ratios and Damköhler numbers using the RCM-FLAME apparatus.
Vinicius Maron Sauer
California State University-Northridge, CA·Engineering
Design new non-premixed counterflow burners using quadric surfaces and their combinations to create unevenly curved flames like those in practical combustion systems.
Claude Goldsmith
Brown University, RI·Engineering
Measure branching fractions, the share of a reaction going to each possible product, for key NOx-related reactions in ammonia combustion, using shock tube experiments.
The school
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 25 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 692 research doctorates a year.
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