Transport coefficients of typical biomass equimolar CO–H2 plasma

Abstract

Knowledge of the transport properties of biomass gases is important for modelling plasma flow processes and heat transfer. In this study, calculations were performed for typical biomass equimolar CO–H2 plasma in a temperature range from 500 to 30 000 K at pressures of 1.0, 2.0, 5.0 and 10.0 bar. Herein, the plasma composition was determined at equilibrium using the Gibbs free energy equation. First, we restricted the species number to 18 for CO–H2 plasma. Second, the most recent data on potential interactions and elastic differential cross sections were carefully investigated in order to choose those most appropriate to define the collision integrals. Due to a lack of data we used an improvement of the Lennard-Jones function. Third, we tested our collision integrals by comparing (1) the viscosity to experimental data of CO2, CH4 and CO (low temperature) and (2) the thermal conductivity and vicosity to theoretical results for CO2 plasma (up to 17 000 K). Finally, the viscosity, thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity were calculated for different pressures.