A cold thermionically emitting dusty air plasma formed by radiativeheating of graphite particulates |
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Authors: | Lilly J.L. Subramanian V.V. |
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Affiliation: | Center for Adv. Plasma Eng., Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH; |
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Abstract: | Formation of an atmospheric pressure dusty air plasma is explored experimentally in this paper. The plasma is created by seeding an air flow with graphite particles and irradiating the particulates with a focused CO2 laser beam. The graphite particles are, thus, heated to thermionically emitting temperatures, and average particle temperatures and average particle number densities are measured. The presence of charges is inferred both from these measured quantities using a simple theoretical transient model, and experimentally by applying a dc bias across the irradiated region. It is found that an electron density of ~6.7 × 105 cm-3 (6.7 × 1011 m-3) can be produced at steady state in the presence of O2. This value can be increased to 3.6 × 107 cm-3 (3.6 × 1013 m -1) in the ideal case where an electron attachment to O2 is suppressed and where a lower work function particulate is used |
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