Expert: Mike Fulcher - 4/12/2008

Question
If I ionize the air in an area that I intend to combust will the addition of electrons to the air aid combustion in the form of reduction as it would presumably take less energy (a lower energy barrier) to form a bond? Is this true? Would the bond formed by this means be any weaker?

Answer
Good question.  Presumably by adding energy to the system in the form of ionization you would reduce the total amount of energy needed to start the combustion reaction.  Given that combustions are typically exothermic, I would expect as an end result you would see more energy out of the combustion than would be calculated from a thermodynamic analysis of the non-ionized components.  This could be confirmed via differential scanning calorimetry comparing and ionized versus ionized  air feed used to combust the fuel.  Of course, the scale of difference might be small enough to be in the noise and not easily measured.  Given the combustion products would be identical and any extra energy would be released to the system as heat, I wouldn't expect any difference in bond strength.  Thanks for the good question.