Numerical simulation of thermochemically non-equilibrium inductively coupled plasmas under different operating parameters

Abstract

A thermochemical non-equilibrium model for inductively coupled plasmas (ICPs) has been utilized to investigate the effect of different operating parameters. The effects of operating parameters, including the injection mass flow rate, input power, operating pressure, and induction frequency, are studied in this manuscript. The spatial distributions of electron temperature, plasma velocity, and chemical particles fields are discussed under different operating conditions. The simulation results show that the spatial characteristics of ICP torch have a strong relationship with the variation of operating parameters, especially the pressure. However, the induction frequency over the range investigated is proved to have little significant effect on the distributions of plasma fields. This numerical model is helpful to determine the optimum conditions for the generation of the desired plasma.