Numerical and experimental study of the distribution of charged species in a flat stoichiometric premixed CH4/O2/Ar flame

In this paper, an existing ion reaction mechanism is used to compute the distribution of charged species in a at stoichiometric premixed CH4/O2/Ar flame stabilized on top of a McKenna burner. The ion reaction rates and charged species thermodynamic data are updated according to the most recent data. A modified version of the detailed ARAMCO 1.3 reaction mechanism is used to describe the chemistry of neutral species. Because of the important role of CH in the chemi-ionization process, its prediction is improved based on the available measured data. The ability of the ion reaction mechanism to predict the distribution of positive ions is assessed by comparing to the experimental measurements performed in our group. The calculated results are qualitatively consistent with the experimental data, even though there exist quantitative differences that need to be addressed in future work.