Study on Coal Combustion Assisted by a Three-Electrode Structured Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma

To overcome the limitations of conventional combustion technologies and improve both the efficiency and cleanliness of coal utilization, this study investigates coal combustion assisted by dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma. Based on the traditional two-electrode configuration, a novel ring-needle-plate three-electrode pulsed DBD structure was designed and constructed. The plasma characteristics and their regulatory effects on the combustion process were systematically examined. Experimental results demonstrate that, under identical applied voltages, the three-electrode configuration significantly outperforms the two-electrode system in terms of combustion temperature rise and mass loss efficiency. At a pulsed voltage of 9kV, the three-electrode DBD exhibited an energy density$1.6\times $higher than that of the two-electrode configuration, while the maximum temperature in the combustion reaction zone increased by 27% and the coal mass loss rate per unit time improved by 46%. These findings highlight that innovations in electrode structure can markedly enhance the performance of DBD-assisted combustion, providing both theoretical insights and experimental evidence for the development of plasma-assisted high-efficiency and clean coal combustion.