Study of the LTE departure in a low pressure supersonic plasma jet in Ar-H{sub 2} and in Ar-N{sub 2}-H{sub 2} mixture
Plasma torches at low pressure and controlled atmosphere are used in major applications for the production and processing of materials due to their potential for high performance, and low contamination. A good knowledge of the plasma parameters is necessary, particularly for the design of high-performance mathematical models that avoid the building of expensive prototypes for performance assessment. The present work is undertaken on a DC plasma torch operating over a wide pressure range (8 kPa to 100 kPa) at an arc power fixed at 17.5 kW. Emission spectroscopy diagnostics was carried out for determining temperature, electron and particle density profiles in two gas mixtures: Ar-N{sub 2}-H{sub 2} with flow rates of 40, 10, and 1 slpm respectively, and Ar-H{sub 2} with input flow rates of 35 and 7 slpm respectively. For the gas mixtures used, the supersonic shock occurs at a distance from the nozzle exit growing when the pressure decreases (8, 10, and 13 mm for pressures of 13, 20 and 26 kPa). For pressures of 100 kPa and 53 kPa, they observe a good agreement between the values of electron density Ne experimentally measured independently of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) and the values obtained by calculation using the temperature obtained with Boltzmann diagram. Local thermodynamic equilibrium conditions prevail at these values of pressure. For the lower values of the pressure, the experimental value of N{sub 2}{sup {minus}} ion density are higher than the calculated values, using the rotational temperature T{sub h}, or the Boltzmann temperature T{sub e}. The discrepancy is lower with the use of T{sub e}. That shows the importance of the collisions between electrons and heavy particles, due to the high values of the electron density (4.10{sup 16} cm{sup {minus}3} in the supersonic shock wave for 13 kPa). For pressure lower than 26 kPa important deviation from LTE conditions are observed.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. de Sherbrooke, Quebec (CA)
- OSTI ID:
- 20067608
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 1999 IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science, Monterey, CA (US), 06/20/1999--06/24/1999; Other Information: PBD: 1999; Related Information: In: The 26th IEEE international conference on plasma science, 342 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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