Interaction of a H2O/Ar Plasma Jet with Nitrogen Atmosphere: Effect of the Method for Calculating Thermophysical Properties of the Gas Mixture on the Flow Field

Abstract

The effect of calculating thermodynamic and transport properties of a gas mixture with mixing rules on the flow field in the modeling of a thermal plasma jet was studied. A 3D large eddy simulation model of a non-transferred direct current hybrid water/argon plasma torch issuing in nitrogen atmosphere at 400 K was developed to compare three different models for the calculation of transport and thermodynamic properties of the ternary gas mixture. In the first model, thermodynamic and transport properties of the pure gases are used with mixing rules to estimate the mixture properties. In the second model, the properties of plasma gas (Ar/H2O) are calculated rigorously and mixing rules are used for estimating the properties of the mixture of plasma gas and nitrogen. In the third model, the thermodynamic and transport properties of the ternary gas mixture are calculated rigorously without any mixing rules. From numerical results, the error introduced by using mixing rules was evaluated through comparison of calculated temperature, velocity and concentration profiles of the flow field at different positions downstream of the torch exit nozzle. It was found that the differences in transport properties between the exact solutions and the results from calculation with mixing rules can yield significantly different flow fields.