The hydrodynamic equations for chemically equilibrium flows of a multielement plasma with exact transport coefficients

Abstract

Explicit expressions for all of the effective transport coefficients are derived for thermochemically equilibrium flows using the exact mass and heat transfer equations, which are resolved with respect to the “forces” (the gradients of the hydrodynamic variables) via the flukes. It is shown that, in a mixture where the components have different diffusion properties, separation (diffusion) of the chemical elements occurs which leads to a state of affairs where the equilibrium concentrations, and together with them, the effective transport coefficients will be functions not only of the pressure and temperature but will also depend on the concentrations of the elements, determined when solving the problem (self-consistent concentrations of the elements). It is shown that the existence of an electric current and lack of quasineutrality (flow around electrically conducting walls—electrodes) does not change the structure of the expressions for the effective transport coefficients and does not add anything new. The approximate and incomplete treatment of thermochemically equilibrium flows of multicomponent gas mixtures and a plasma in previously published papers are especially noted. Numerical estimates of the effective transport coefficients are presented for an air plasma and the domains in the pressure-temperature plane with the required number of approximations in order to obtain results with an error of no worse than ∼5% are indicated.