Session 9T - Supplemental.
POSTER session, Friday morning, November 15
Exhibit Hall - Concourse Level, Adam's Mark
Water molecules in steam are passing through a plasma torch with extremely high temperature. A typical gas temperature inside the torch is more than 10 thousand degrees centigrade. Most water molecules may be ionized and then recombine with electrons through the dissociative recombination process. The water molecules at this extreme temperature disintegrate into the radical hydrogen atoms and OH molecules in a fraction of microseconds. There are two quasi-equilibrium states of gas kinetics when a fluid element of torch gas propagates downstream. They are H- and O- equilibriums, which dominate gas kinetics at the temperature higher than 3 thousand degrees. Most of the dominant gas species during the H- and O- reactions are the hydrogen and oxygen atoms, the OH molecules, and hydrogen and oxygen molecules. These gas species will have strong chemical reactions with any hydrocarbon compound. Concentrations of these radical species are determined in terms of the propagation distance or in terms of temperature, of the fluid element. This work is supported by IR fund at NSWC.