Conductivity of seeded combustion products of acetylene systems

In this paper, the variation of the electrical conductivity of seeded combustion products of an air-acetylene system (seeded with K 2CO 3) with temperature and seeding ratio has been investigated experimentally and the results are found to be in reasonable agreement with theory. The analytical evaluation takes into account the effect of the hydroxyl radical on the electron density, and the energy dependence of the electron collision frequency. A seeded air-acetylene system is found to yield conductivities of interest in MHD power generation. Optimum seeding ratios, corresponding to maximum conductivity, have been evaluated for air-acetylene and oxyacetylene flames; they are found to be very large as compared to the seeding ratios achieved in the experiments.